From the EUROPEAN GEOSCIENCES UNION and the “doom is always just a few years away” department
Deadline for climate action
Act strongly before 2035 to keep warming below 2°C
If governments don’t act decisively by 2035 to fight climate change, humanity could cross a point of no return after which limiting global warming below 2°C in 2100 will be unlikely, according to a new study by scientists in the UK and the Netherlands. The research also shows the deadline to limit warming to 1.5°C has already passed, unless radical climate action is taken. The study is published today in the European Geosciences Union journal Earth System Dynamics.
“In our study we show that there are strict deadlines for taking climate action,” says Henk Dijkstra, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and one of the study authors. “We conclude that very little time is left before the Paris targets [to limit global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C] become infeasible even given drastic emission reduction strategies.”
Dijkstra and his colleagues at the Utrecht Centre for Complex Systems Studies and at Oxford University, UK, wanted to find the ‘point of no return’ or deadline for climate action: the latest possible year to start strongly cutting greenhouse-gas emissions before it’s too late to avoid dangerous climate change. “The ‘point of no return’ concept has the advantage of containing time information, which we consider very useful to inform the debate on the urgency of taking climate action,” says Matthias Aengenheyster, a doctoral researcher at Oxford University and the study’s lead author.
Using information from climate models, the team determined the deadline for starting climate action to keep global warming likely (with a probability of 67%) below 2°C in 2100, depending on how fast humanity can reduce emissions by using more renewable energy. Assuming we could increase the share of renewable energy by 2% every year, we would have to start doing so before 2035 (the point of no return). If we were to reduce emissions at a faster rate, by increasing the share of renewable energy by 5% each year, we would buy another 10 years.
The researchers caution, however, that even their more modest climate-action scenario is quite ambitious. “The share of renewable energy refers to the share of all energy consumed. This has risen over the course of over two decades from almost nothing in the late nineties to 3.6% in 2017 according to the BP Statistical Review, so the [yearly] increases in the share of renewables have been very small,” says Rick van der Ploeg, a professor of economics at Oxford University, who also took part in the Earth System Dynamics study. “Considering the slow speed of large-scale political and economic transformations, decisive action is still warranted as the modest-action scenario is a large change compared to current emission rates,” he adds.
To likely limit global warming to 1.5°C in 2100, humanity would have to take strong climate action much sooner. We would only have until 2027 to start if we could increase the share of renewables at a rate of 5% a year. We have already passed the point of no return for the more modest climate-action scenario where the share of renewables increases by 2% each year. In this scenario, unless we remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it is no longer possible to achieve the 1.5°C target in 2100 with a probability of 67%.
Removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, by using ‘negative emissions’ technology, could buy us a bit more time, according to the study. But even with strong negative emissions, humanity would only be able to delay the point of no return by 6 to 10 years.
“We hope that ‘having a deadline’ may stimulate the sense of urgency to act for politicians and policy makers,” concludes Dijkstra. “Very little time is left to achieve the Paris targets.”
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“The ‘point of no return’ concept has the advantage of containing time information, which we consider very useful to inform the debate on the urgency of taking climate action.”
Translation: We will do anything to get your money.
They’ll do that in 2090.
–Deadline for climate action
Act strongly before 2035 to keep warming below 2°C–
So global average surface air temperature is about 15 C and some desire to act strongly
to keep below about 17 C ?
According to Berkeley Earth, Los Angeles is average yearly surface air temperature is about 16.5 C and in first part of 20th century it was about 16 C.
LA Mean of Daily High Temperature is now a bit over 23 C and in first part of 20th century was a bit less than 23 C and Mean of Daily Low Temperature has risen more than .5 C during same time
period, going from about 8 C to 8.5 C:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/locations/34.56N-118.70W
Not sure about Urban heat island effect, probably trying to remove it it’s effect [“adjustments”], as I would think such huge increase in urban population- and freeways invented and built all over the place, and roadways, and all the buildings would have cause at least 1 C to average temperature.
So guess if including UHI effect, the Mean Daily Low Temperature of a year would average higher than 10 C, currently.
But continue to adjust to exclude UHI, is the goal to keep LA below a Mean Daily Low Temperature below 10 C or is to keep it below 12 C.
If looking more broadly, US average temperature is a bit below 10 C, {and if exclude Alaska it is about 12 C].
It’s Mean of Daily High Temperature is about 16.5 C
Mean of Daily Low Temperature is about 3 C
Since early part of 20th century, Mean of Daily High Temperature was a bit below 16 C and Mean Low about 2.5 C.
So is goal to keep entire average temperature US at or below 12 C- which already is if exclude Alaska- or keep US without Alaska below 14 C?
In terms of global temperature what is important is the global ocean surface temperature, which if include the tropics [40% of oceans] is about 17 C, and if exclude tropics it’s about 11 C and average tropics is about 26 C.
What would significant would be that ocean outside the tropics were to increase from about 11 to 13 C.
Is goal to prevent 2 C warming of oceans outside of tropics [60% of all oceans] ?
Or to prevent the tropical ocean from increasing by 2 C- so that increasing from about 26 C to about 28 C.
The tropical ocean is the heat engine of the world if tropical ocean were to warm by 2 C it could be that tropical ocean is warming the rest of world, less. But for global warming what is significant of for the 60% of the ocean to increase by 2 C. Or if tropical ocean to remain about the same and the rest of ocean were to increase from 11 to 13 C, this would have huge effect upon global temperature. Whereas if “somehow” the tropical ocean were to increase from about 26 C to 28 C and rest of world’s ocean were to remain around 11 C, this would be far less significant effect upon global temperature and have less global effect [and be a very strange thing to happen and maybe an impossible thing to happen].
Or the more plausible or normal way would be increase of temperature of the surface ocean outside of the tropics and if talking about global increase in temperature and by 2 C, you would be talking about the ocean surface temperature outside of the tropics increase by about 2 C.
So going from about 11 to about 13 C.
Honestly could not decipher your point. There is nothing we do that makes any temperature difference in air or water. If some process we don’t understand is actually making the Earth warmer, our best reaction is to prepare to weather the changes, so to speak.
Dijkstra and his colleagues at the Utrecht Centre for Complex Systems Studies and at Oxford University, UK, wanted to find – something that nobody else has thought of to study regarding human modification of the average of weather to assure continued funding of their respective departments. They were sitting at the local pub having a few pints, when one of them said: “Ah ha! I’ve got it! The POINT OF NO RETURN!” “Nobody has done that yet. We’ll get millions!”
Nope, the rock group “Kansas” beat them to it.
Every time we get close to the point of no return, they move the date back. I see a trend here. Extrapolating this out it looks like the real point will be…never! Yeah, we just solved the CAGW problem!
They lowered the danger threshold to 1.5% increase and stretched the start-measuring date from 1950 back to 1850 when it became clear that we just couldn’t heat up 1.5 degrees above 1950 even with no added ruinoobles or reduction in fossil fuels. This way, they’ve already banked half the increase.
This was the beginning of the end. Like a chicken with its head cut-off, we are in the leaping and wild flapping stage of the meme.
“Using information from climate models” Once again modeling is the bases for their doom and gloom analysis. It is complete arrogance to continue using modeling when it has been established they are not a reliable source. Yes they are fun to play what-if but unacceptable to base monumental policies upon.
“If governments don’t act decisively by 2035 to fight climate change, humanity could cross a point of no return …”
Didn’t we already pass the point of no return several times by now?
– I’m pretty sure Hansen’s 2006 “At most 10 years” point of no return passed us by a couple of years ago.
– And Pachauri’s “without drastic action by 2012” point of no return is half a dozen years gone.
– It’s been 18 years since 2000 which is the point of no return the UN gave (back in the 1980s) that would result in rising sea levels washing away entire countries.
All those previous “point of no returns” (and many more) have come and gone and the predicted disasters remain elusive. How many times is the alarmist establishment have to cry
wolfPoint of No Return?Of course we’ve crossed the point of no return, and have no intention of going back to the ways of the past.
This means they are not counting nuclear or hydro as renewable if late 90s was 0.
Think of the “DYN-O-MITE!” hydro we’ll have when the ice caps melt.
Actually it will reduce the over-all pressure head, but a moot point all the same.
Oxford University, UK, wanted to find the ‘point of no return’ or deadline for
Will someone point me to someone, anyone, living or deceased, from any previous time or era, any civilisation or society who DIDN’T want to know the future.
That folks from one of (supposedly) THE most prestigious & long established universities in The Whole World imagine they can find the answer inside a box of electronics…… is what?
The only word I can think is ‘sad’
(Or that computer salesman must have put One Epic Sales-Pitch. Bridge anyone?)
What happened. What went wrong.
What became of Original & Genuine Thought based on lifetimes of accumulated knowledge?
Or, despite all our claims to the contrary, we are no more advanced than the advisors to the Pharaohs – throwing chicken entrails across the floor.
Yes and I cringe too at when my alma mater, MIT, makes ludicrous pronouncements. At least we had Lindzen, until they promoted him out. 🙁
A historical vestige of greatness of Oxford University remains in the high station it still has in the outdated valuation lists of world universities published each year. Harvard is still there, too, which is proof that post normal drones have taken over this work. It reminds me of the ruins of the Statue of Liberty still with its strong brow and and firm jaw, lying among the bricks and jetsam and flotsam in the planet of the apes.
I had always wondered if the movie was just a fanciful, light scifi tale for our entertainment or a deeper darker diabolically clever satire of the way the world was heading. I realize it was the former but it is gathering more intelligent Neo Dark Ages patina with age. Oxford’s greatness today is a warning to send your children to study in Eastern Europe.
We’re all doomed unless we stomp the peasants NOW! Cram the urban peasants into tenements on meager rations, with crummy jitneys to cart ’em around now and then. Cram the rural peasants into huts and make ’em do stoop labor for pennies, like the good old days.
The big shots will still get to fly around to conferences, nosh paté, and pontificate to the rest of us, and the airports and swish hotels will be a lot less crowded.
What do they mean by ‘climate action ‘? Kill the poor? And what level of CO2 equals 2 degrees? I’v e never seen a number.
That’s because they don’t know what climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is, so they’re just hoping no one has spotted that they seem to have misplaced their magic calculator.
You’d think that after all the previous deadlines that have passed without noticeable disasters, all the tipping points that have come and gone, that they might change the message a bit. Wouldn’t you?
Nobody paid attention when the deadline was just months away, so pushing it 17 years into the future is just telling people it’s OK to procrastinate.
They need to suppress this study, come up with something scary that will get all the dumb public aroused enough to do something positive. Something scary, but vague enough that nobody will notice when those damned denializationists try and deny it. Perhaps abandon “global warming” and substitute “climate change”. There’s an idea!!
Let’s see … in 2035, if I am blessed to live that long, I will turn 79 on June 23rd, which will also be the 47th anniversary of Dr. James Hansen’s testimony in that sweltering Senate committee room. Seems like an appropriately precise date for such a claim. I think I will put this on my calendar, to invite all the grandchildren to come watch the point of no return.
Am I alone in being sick and tired of the alarmists “could” and “might” and pathetic maybes? What about the scuence and every mught has also a mught not and maybe a may not. The standard of this junk being passed off as credible science makes the National Enquirer look authoritative.
Lucky for me, I don’t subscribe to the notion that CO2 is pollution. Disaster averted.
“If we were to reduce emissions at a faster rate, by increasing the share of renewable energy by 5% each year, we would buy another 10 years.”….Boy, have I got a deal for you, and if you like that, there’s this bridge that I’ve got that might interest you!
How old is Dijkstra? I rather hope he is considerably younger than me. I will probably see 2025, but 2035 is drawing a long bow. As someone wrote earlier, it is worth marking the year on the calendar so that our grandchildren know when to observe Dijkstra’s colleagues wiping the accumulated egg off his face (if he is still alive).
Living in a cool temperate climate as I do (central New Zealand) I rather hope that should I survive to 2035 it will be a couple of degrees warmer and that the increased carbon dioxide will enhance the growth my wife’s tomatoes.
But we have started.
lol. What did the team think was the point of all that champagne and canapés in Paris?
And what’s more, they are going to continue starting some climate action for many years to come. Probably until they run out of champagne and canapés or the sun blows up, which ever happens first.
I’ve sort of lost track, but wasn’t the world going to be past the tipping point by 2003 or something when Hansen did his first magical mystery tour?
At some point, this particular scam has to reach its expiration date, as natural variation puts us back into a 30-year cooling trend. That’s why we see such desperate hysterics.
If world socialism doesn’t get implemented very soon, it will be a terrible missed opportunity. It may be too late, maybe for a generation! They’ve got to be able to claim that the cooling is due to their actions saving the planet. If we go more than a few more years, decades of work will be down the crapper, and they’ll have to come up with new lies about how burning fossil fuels is driving global cooling that is going to destroy life on earth in 15 years.
But then again, I have high confidence in their ability to switch from global warming to global cooling without missing a beat. That’s what Climate Change TM and Climate Collapse TM are all about after all. Whatever happens, it’s BAD, we’re causing it, and the solution is “stop burning fossil fuels, we need more socialism”.
We keep hitting the ‘point of no return,’ and then they promptly extend the deadline. How can the debate be settled if they keep moving the goal posts? They clearly don’t really know what they claim to know.
In my opinion, if the date given for some end-of-the-world catastrophe ends in zero or five, or if the years we have left is a variation of five or ten, it is just a wild guess intended to keep the populace alarmed and can be safely ignored.
So we presently have 2% ruinoobles and it cost us $10 trillion. So, with our experience we can cut this down to $5 trillion a year in perpetuity. Do we have enough resources to print that much money.
And yet CO2 levels during the Triassic were at 1000ppm.
*pinches skin on arm until it hurts*
Nope, still alive apparently…
2035, wasn’t that Pachuri’s Himalayan glacier year?
ho hum