Earth is trapping twice as much heat as it did in 2005

> An unusually intense PDO phase that began in about 2014 caused a reduction in cloud formation above the ocean, which also resulted in the increased absorption of incoming energy by the planet, the scientists said.

We should be converting cities into greener spots to reduce ambient heat, and start switching to hydro-phonic farming within the cities. These are not future techs we already have them. No one need new fighter jets, when you have nukes. So why drown money into 'new jet research'?

That 4C temperature is the long-term equilibrium. The word "trapped" in the headline means the amount of additional energy that goes to alter that equilibrium.

It's not measuring the total greenhouse effect. It's measuring the additional greenhouse effect. Or rather, all of the total factors contributing to warming, which includes things like more blue ocean rather than bright ice.

As you note, the existing greenhouse effect is really quite large, and the additional ~200 ppm of carbon dioxide is relatively small. It leads to a change of about 1C so far, and perhaps a total of 3-4C over the next century. But those changes are significant when it comes to human society, both directly because of the temperature and indirectly due to an increase in extreme events.

We've got plenty of long-term temperature charts, calculated in a variety of different ways. Wikipedia seems as good a place to start as any:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record

This metric isn't really new. It's just becoming public because somebody's hoping that a new way to look at the same information might finally click with somebody. There hasn't really been anything new for decades about climate change, except the long steady drumbeat of data confirming the predictions. Which is no surprise: the basic physics and chemistry of climate change is really quite straightforward and well understood.

They haven't just been telling you the CO2 levels. They've also been telling you the temperature, which are around .5C/1F over the long-term average.

Increasing temperature and increasing energy imbalance are one and the same thing. Trap more energy, get more temperature: it's the same Q=(delta T)mc you learned in high school chemistry.

It's just that we know that increasing CO2 is the reason for it, and it's the thing we can do something about.

Incidentally, the article specifically mentions a series of measurements, indicating that there is indeed a climate change going on, and while it also mentions short-term natural changes as a contributing factor, it also mentions that the scientist responsible for the study believe human factors are a large part of it.

If by screwed you mean 2% of the population dying due to climate change, and roughly the same amount of total infrastructure damage then sure, were screwed, but its not a civilizational threat.

Not to say it isnt bad, the loss of biosphere and the unique and irreplaceable information it contains is an absolute tragedy.