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Dethe Elza's avatar

I mean, all of that is bad enough, but I don't see much in the way of "getting to net zero by 2050." Emissions are up, fracking is up, demand (thanks to the great AI con) is up. The world is gearing up for war, which always raises emissions. As so-called "green" energy is ramped up, burning fossil fuel is ramped up even faster. I don't see revolution eminent, so collapse looks like the only way we're going to reduce emissions.

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Greeley Miklashek, MD's avatar

So, dear Richard, I'm just a retired physician/psychiatrist/addicitionist/stress researcher/recovered alcoholic-addict, with a BA in chemistry and an MD/psychiatry fellowship, but I cannot follow your calculations. I'll stick with C3S, Copernicus Climate Change Service (EU), and their publications, including their running daily "Climate Pulse" page. Last July 18 they published "Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action", in which they stated that the average global temp. had increased 0.75 degC in the period 2020-present, 2024 1/2. If they counted from the end of 2020 to now, then we're looking at an average increase of 0.214 degC PER YEAR, not "decadal" as you reported, and even if they were counting including the whole year of 2020, so 4 1/2 yrs. rather than 3 1/2 yrs., then we're looking at a 0.17 degC PER YEAR increase. With those hard scientific number from the most respected meteorological institution in the world, we're experiencing between a 1 degC global ave. temp increase over the 1991-2020 baseline, which they use, of every 5 to 5.9 yrs. So, if we're already 1.6 degC hotter, then we may reach 2.6 degC increase by 2030, 3.6 degC by 2036, 4.6 degC by 2042, and 5.6 degC by 2048, right? The "hockey stick" curve is accelerating its upward bend.

Without getting into the tall grass of the CO2 controversies, any fool can see Greenland and Antarctica ice melting. 30-41 million tons of Greenland ice are melting HOURLY now, and accelerating, where each pound of melting ice is absorbing 144 BTUs of excess global accumulating heat energy. You do the math, my puter went up in flames when I tried the calculation! ( :)) Polymath and retired college math prof., Eliot Jacobson, calculated that our current "energy imbalance" is the equivalent of 20 Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. The rapidly melting Greenland ice is our "canary in the coal mine" existential warning and it's flashing red for DANGER much faster then your well meant data set.

We are continuing to burn 8 billion tons of coal per year and 100 million barrels of oil per day, 13.3 million here in the US, as the CO2/methane gas produced in the process accumulates in the atmosphere, now totally 980 GT for CO2, that sticks around for 100 yrs. Our AC to balance this heat production is the hydrological cycle evaporating 1-1.4 trillion tons of water vapor daily, but lasting only 10-14 days, so 10-14 trillion tons up there at any one time. It's the heat energy escalator that previously kept us in the "sweet spot" for global ave. temp's. It has been overwhelmed and we are burning up, would be my simple minded summary. Sure, some very cold events interspersed by the ever bigger and more heat energy fueled megastorms , but they are just another symptom of a planet producing too damn much heat energy by burning to damn much fossil fuel. Do you feel me?

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