Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to a new study there’s no longer any point trying to prevent global warming from exceeding United Nations goals of 1.5C or even 2C – though we should cease CO2 emissions immediately to slow it down.
Global Warming Already Baked In Will Blow Past Climate Goals, a New Study Says
BY SETH BORENSTEIN / AP JANUARY 4, 2021 11:23 PM EST
The amount of baked-in global warming, from carbon pollution already in the air, is enough to blow past international agreed upon goals to limit climate change, a new study finds.
But it’s not game over because, while that amount of warming may be inevitable, it can be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops emitting extra greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s authors say.
For decades, scientists have talked about so-called “committed warming” or the increase in future temperature based on past carbon dioxide emissions that stay in the atmosphere for well over a century. It’s like the distance a speeding car travels after the brakes are applied.
But Monday’s study in the journal Nature Climate Change calculates that a bit differently and now figures the carbon pollution already put in the air will push global temperatures to about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times.
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Just because the world is bound to get more warming than international goals, that doesn’t mean all is lost in the fight against global warming, said Dessler, who cautioned against what he called “climate doomers.”
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Read more: https://time.com/5926319/global-warming-climate-goals/
The abstract of the study;
Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect
Chen Zhou, Mark D. Zelinka, Andrew E. Dessler & Minghuai Wang
Abstract
Our planet’s energy balance is sensitive to spatial inhomogeneities in sea surface temperature and sea ice changes, but this is typically ignored in climate projections. Here, we show the energy budget during recent decades can be closed by combining changes in effective radiative forcing, linear radiative damping and this pattern effect. The pattern effect is of comparable magnitude but opposite sign to Earth’s net energy imbalance in the 2000s, indicating its importance when predicting the future climate on the basis of observations. After the pattern effect is accounted for, the best-estimate value of committed global warming at present-day forcing rises from 1.31 K (0.99–2.33 K, 5th–95th percentile) to over 2 K, and committed warming in 2100 with constant long-lived forcing increases from 1.32 K (0.94–2.03 K) to over 1.5 K, although the magnitude is sensitive to sea surface temperature dataset. Further constraints on the pattern effect are needed to reduce climate projection uncertainty.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00955-x
Sadly the full study is paywalled, but I think we get the idea.
I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed. How much longer do we have to wait until there is no longer any hope, and greens give up on urging us to build renewables? I had hoped that once greens came to believe global warming was on track to blow through 2C they’d declare game over. But they’re still finding reasons to demand compliance.
There was no point to begin with.
This study seems to depend on an unrealistically high climate sensitivity. CO2 has increased from about 280 to about 415 PPMV, or about 57% of a log scale doubling. I have figured before that CO2 accounts for about 85% of the warming by manmade increase of greenhouse gases. 85% of 2.3 degrees C of warming is 1.955 degree C. If 1.955 degree C of warming is going to happen from 57% of a log scale doubling of CO2, then this depends on climate sensitivity of 3.4 degrees C per 2xCO2, which is on the high side rather than the middle of climate sensitivity indicated by climate models and IPCC assessment reports. If this 2.3 degrees C of warming is to happen even if manmade emissions of methane (with a short atmospheric lifetime) are stopped, then this 2.3 degrees C of warming depends on climate sensitivity even higher than 3.4 degrees C per 2xCO2. Climate sensitivity even higher still is needed to make 2.3 degree C of warming happen if manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped, because my calculations here are based on atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases staying level as opposed to the slow decrease that will happen if manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The way global temperature has changed in comparison to projections by climate models (especially the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ones, also the CMIP7 ones) indicates climate sensitivity in the lower part of the range indicated by the CMIP3 and CMIP5 models and IPCC assessment reports.
I’m astounded at how ignorant global warming alarmists are about future energy sources, especially the leading candidate to become the dominant means of producing power : the Small Modular molten salt reactor. It’s everything one could ever possibly want in a power generators and it produces cheaper power than practically every other technology, except low prices natural gas. Rather than spend window, blowhard arguments about future temps, these simpleminded types should be pushing what is a very simple solution for emission control. Of course, the fact that this future technology shows their renewable power BS to be obviously BS, could have a dampening effect on their enthusiasm for molten salt reactors.
From the article: “I had hoped that once greens came to believe global warming was on track to blow through 2C they’d declare game over. But they’re still finding reasons to demand compliance.”
This is just a way to speed up implementation of Green New Deals. It’s worse than we thought, but if we do something NOW, we might be able to mitigate some of the damage.
Psychological warfare.
Ah, the famous but hitherto overlooked “pattern effect”.
For decades they have not been able reconcile the energy budget of climate models, when all we needed to do “correct” for the pattern effect.
Never heard of the “pattern effect”? Sssh. Just play along and no one will realise how ignorant you are until a little boy in the crowd shouts out ” what are you talking about , there is not such thing as the pattern effect”.
The Dog Ate My Global Warming
The warming is:
Did I miss any?
Yes: cooling is actually evidence of warming.
After decades of pretending that the entire climate system can be reduced to a single scalar variable : the physically meaningless, global mean surface temperature and that we should destroy are current way of life to control this magic number, they now want us to believe that it is more complicated than that?
Sorry. , we already know that non linear, chaotic systems can be satisfactorily quantified by a single number and the control knob is our consumption of fossil fuels. I mean, all we have to do is ” follow the science”.
Right ?
Check the records “since records began” Actually they go back a lot more than 10Ka. What is most likely to happen next? THere will be a well established cooling to the next Little Ice age minima by 2100, if the c actual temperatures continue to follow the natural cycles..
And why is current warming to 2 deg lower maximum than Minoan times a problem when the trend is to neo glacial decline to the stable glacial phase of the longer term ice age cycle, when the ice sheets will come again and polar bears will be active in the USA. Just the facts.
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