Excellent summary and analysis. I would suggest though that you miss a couple of very important points.
1) The "moderates" position was a) never moderate - they knew better, and b) was simply opinion - not based on data. It has no more value and had no more value (less actually) than your analysis now with vastly more data. That their position was accepted was a logical fallacy. It was an invalid "appeal to authority". By their positions, they were accorded merit in their opinions. That was unwarranted. They knew better as long ago as the 1950s.
2) You make the error of referring ONLY to CO2. The real metric is the sum of the warming gases, CO2(e). Using CO2 alone strongly discounts the impact of human emissions. We are now at the first doubling of CO2 warming as assessed by CO2(e) - about 550 ppm. This is and has been huge for a long time.
3) The "moderates" and scientists in general, climate experts in particular, make another egregious error in ONLY looking at the data. They are biased by that both by looking entirely in the rear view mirror. That has several problems, including discounting the most recent times. AND in excluding all of the lag effects.
The climate sensitivity comes in a couple of measures. The short term impact misses the lags and follow on positive feedbacks that greatly increase the sensitivity.
We know from the climate data for the last 750,000 years that the climate sensitivity for a 100 ppm CO2 rise (that had negligible amounts of other warming gases) that rising from 185 ppm to 285 ppm caused a rise of about 13 C. That is a factor of 1.54 rise in warming gases equating to +13 C rise in temperature. Since from the height of that we know that the earth reaches hot house earth upper bound conditions at about +11 C over the 1750 baseline, that our maximum warming gas rise to slam into the hot house earth upper bound is about a 1.5 x rise from 285 ppm. i.e. 428 ppm as CO2 only. We are already there. And we long ago passed that when we look at CO2(e).
What this means is that we must urgently drop the warming gas levels in the atmosphere to less than about 315 ppm including the warming gases. And we must do so long before the Greenland and Antarctic ice melt.
We also know that we have already begun destabilizing both the terrestrial permafrost and the oceanic methane clathrates. When either of those significantly release their carbon we are done. We cannot overcome the 1,500 plus gigatonnes of carbon release they contain.
So, what are our chances of success. Some where between diddly-squat and zilch.
We lied to ourselves since the 1950s. And now the bill comes due.
But there is more. As it turns out the atmosphere is very close to the thermodynamic tipping point for converting from a three cell atmospheric circulation to a one cell circulation. That takes us back to the Eocene. It also ends agriculture as the rain band at 45 degrees north ceases to exist. The models do not include consideration of such a change.
And more yet. The great oceanic circulation is dying at several places. The cold arctic waters no longer drive the Atlantic Meriodonal Overturning, or its equivalent in the Pacific. And this is already having massive effects on the oceans. The northern returns of the circulation have all but died. And now the whole circulation will shift, with massive impacts on the oceans, the atmosphere, climate and weather. And the models do not include any of that either.
Or of the impacts of warming oceans on the breakdown of the deeper clathrates. Or .... or .... or ....
You should read my last few posts, I address some of the issues you mention. However, there just isn't enough time to cover EVERYTHING. I have been focusing on the Permafrost Melt since I realized what Arctic Amplification was going to do to the Climate System and what it reveals about how the Climate System actually works.
You are correct though, the more you know, the more it becomes clear that COLLAPSE and a 'Dark Age' are coming.
A decade ago I came to understand that climate change would kill me. Me personally.
Now we are here. .... The question is no longer if, but when and how quickly and in which way? And now we have COVID everywhere trying to kill us all. Plus the collapsing ecosystems, the dying oceanic circulation, and ....
Excellent research and numbers, and I concur with your assessment.
Some years go I read a report on the mechanism of the IPCC conference, where the scientists would produce a report agreed between themselves based on the science, and that would then be passed to a roomful of government policy minions who would then rewrite the report on behalf of their respective government's interests. I presume that hasn't changed, and if so, the IPCC are always going to produce moderated and anodyne reports.
Your assessment and others I have read seems to mean that climate change is literally 'baked in' and, with the dozens of feedback mechanisms (perhaps with dozens more we don't yet know about), your timescale may even be shortened.
The only slight haven may be offered by an AMOC turnoff that might reduce sea temperatures sufficiently in the northern Atlantic to chill northern European coasts. I'm banking on it - I have moved to Brittany in France on that expectation. We shall see.
As for the rest, I think we may see 3*C in the next couple of decades and a Lovelock Gaian-type solution to overpopulation of this planet. Peak People. I'm really not sure if I want to be around long enough to be proved right.
Richard,
Excellent summary and analysis. I would suggest though that you miss a couple of very important points.
1) The "moderates" position was a) never moderate - they knew better, and b) was simply opinion - not based on data. It has no more value and had no more value (less actually) than your analysis now with vastly more data. That their position was accepted was a logical fallacy. It was an invalid "appeal to authority". By their positions, they were accorded merit in their opinions. That was unwarranted. They knew better as long ago as the 1950s.
2) You make the error of referring ONLY to CO2. The real metric is the sum of the warming gases, CO2(e). Using CO2 alone strongly discounts the impact of human emissions. We are now at the first doubling of CO2 warming as assessed by CO2(e) - about 550 ppm. This is and has been huge for a long time.
3) The "moderates" and scientists in general, climate experts in particular, make another egregious error in ONLY looking at the data. They are biased by that both by looking entirely in the rear view mirror. That has several problems, including discounting the most recent times. AND in excluding all of the lag effects.
The climate sensitivity comes in a couple of measures. The short term impact misses the lags and follow on positive feedbacks that greatly increase the sensitivity.
We know from the climate data for the last 750,000 years that the climate sensitivity for a 100 ppm CO2 rise (that had negligible amounts of other warming gases) that rising from 185 ppm to 285 ppm caused a rise of about 13 C. That is a factor of 1.54 rise in warming gases equating to +13 C rise in temperature. Since from the height of that we know that the earth reaches hot house earth upper bound conditions at about +11 C over the 1750 baseline, that our maximum warming gas rise to slam into the hot house earth upper bound is about a 1.5 x rise from 285 ppm. i.e. 428 ppm as CO2 only. We are already there. And we long ago passed that when we look at CO2(e).
What this means is that we must urgently drop the warming gas levels in the atmosphere to less than about 315 ppm including the warming gases. And we must do so long before the Greenland and Antarctic ice melt.
We also know that we have already begun destabilizing both the terrestrial permafrost and the oceanic methane clathrates. When either of those significantly release their carbon we are done. We cannot overcome the 1,500 plus gigatonnes of carbon release they contain.
So, what are our chances of success. Some where between diddly-squat and zilch.
We lied to ourselves since the 1950s. And now the bill comes due.
But there is more. As it turns out the atmosphere is very close to the thermodynamic tipping point for converting from a three cell atmospheric circulation to a one cell circulation. That takes us back to the Eocene. It also ends agriculture as the rain band at 45 degrees north ceases to exist. The models do not include consideration of such a change.
And more yet. The great oceanic circulation is dying at several places. The cold arctic waters no longer drive the Atlantic Meriodonal Overturning, or its equivalent in the Pacific. And this is already having massive effects on the oceans. The northern returns of the circulation have all but died. And now the whole circulation will shift, with massive impacts on the oceans, the atmosphere, climate and weather. And the models do not include any of that either.
Or of the impacts of warming oceans on the breakdown of the deeper clathrates. Or .... or .... or ....
You should read my last few posts, I address some of the issues you mention. However, there just isn't enough time to cover EVERYTHING. I have been focusing on the Permafrost Melt since I realized what Arctic Amplification was going to do to the Climate System and what it reveals about how the Climate System actually works.
You are correct though, the more you know, the more it becomes clear that COLLAPSE and a 'Dark Age' are coming.
I have never wished more to be wrong.
50 years ago I thought we had a century.
40 years ago I thought we had 70 years
30 years ago I thought we had 50 years.
20 years ago I thought we had 35 years
A decade ago I came to understand that climate change would kill me. Me personally.
Now we are here. .... The question is no longer if, but when and how quickly and in which way? And now we have COVID everywhere trying to kill us all. Plus the collapsing ecosystems, the dying oceanic circulation, and ....
Excellent research and numbers, and I concur with your assessment.
Some years go I read a report on the mechanism of the IPCC conference, where the scientists would produce a report agreed between themselves based on the science, and that would then be passed to a roomful of government policy minions who would then rewrite the report on behalf of their respective government's interests. I presume that hasn't changed, and if so, the IPCC are always going to produce moderated and anodyne reports.
Your assessment and others I have read seems to mean that climate change is literally 'baked in' and, with the dozens of feedback mechanisms (perhaps with dozens more we don't yet know about), your timescale may even be shortened.
The only slight haven may be offered by an AMOC turnoff that might reduce sea temperatures sufficiently in the northern Atlantic to chill northern European coasts. I'm banking on it - I have moved to Brittany in France on that expectation. We shall see.
As for the rest, I think we may see 3*C in the next couple of decades and a Lovelock Gaian-type solution to overpopulation of this planet. Peak People. I'm really not sure if I want to be around long enough to be proved right.
Thanks Richard another fascinating/scary post.
Here's some more new research to add to the issues
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-carbon-dioxide-potent-climate.html