Thinking about getting to 1.5 C averaged over the planet is surreal and we are still 30 years out from the promised "net zero". We have some tough times ahead of us.
However, to be clear, it’s unlikely we get to net zero in 27 years. We haven’t reached any of our goals so far and the goals only get more difficult
However, atmospheric CO2 concentration would not stay constant after emissions stop. It would go down slowly, mainly because it would continue to dissolve into the oceans. This effect cancels out the above point. Which is why the IPCC says that "The global temperature will stabilise when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero."[1]
Unfortunately, stabilizing temperature does not mean that nothing else changes. The stable higher temperature will still mean that glaciers will continue to melt. Sea levels will continue to rise. Oceans will still acidify further.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/04/04/ipcc-ar6-wgiii-pressrelease/
Key Points
>The rapid growth in the atmospheric methane burden that began in late 2006 is very different from methane's past observational record
>Recent studies point to strongly increased emissions from wetlands, especially in the tropics
>This increase is comparable in scale and speed to glacial/interglacial terminations when the global climate system suddenly reorganized
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00616-x
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01629-0#Sec1
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
> Rising methane could be a sign that Earth’s climate is part-way through a ‘termination-level transition’
https://theconversation.com/rising-methane-could-be-a-sign-t...
>‘Exceptional’ surge in methane emissions from wetlands worries scientists
https://www.carbonbrief.org/exceptional-surge-in-methane-emi...
Dr Peter Carter has a good run down of the rapid rise in methane emissions:
One thing to keep in mind though are aerosols, which can bump the temperature up by a 0.5-1 C (afaik) if we stop emitting them.
That way we can emit a bunch more to rebuild that already-built infrastructure in a different locale!
From the perspective of an individual it is very hard to detect this level of climate change. I can't tell how much warmer any given month was compared to even 20 years ago. We're talking about 28 vs 28.5°C average for a month. (and July and August made news because of pronounced anomalies, other months were probably even murkier stories due to natural monthly variability). This is not perceptible. And no one has an experiential reference point of Average Global Temperature of the 20th Century.
How hot was May of 2003 compared to May of 2023? I could attempt a guess but have zero confidence in it. Do you remember the average temperature of your teenage years summers? "It was hot", "between 25-30..." is all I can give without looking at data.
This is something we should keep in mind when advocating for climate measures, otherwise sceptics have another easy attack - "it feels basically the same, what are you talking about"
Or another example, that I don’t have personal experience with - island nations dealing with a big increase in hurricane severity and/or frequency also have very visceral experiences of climate change.
It is worth noting, though:
- That paper cuts off at 2017. Things have gotten even worse recently: the previous high (on record) for hectares burned by wildfires in Canada was 7.1 million, this year we’re already at 16.5 million, and still growing quickly: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/simply-science/canadas-r...
- Climate change is seen as a major cause of the exceptionally hot, dry, wildfire inducing weather we’ve been seeing, e.g.: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-more-...
Proper winter starts much later and is milder than before, it was 10+ degrees Celsius for the past five or so NYE (didn't even need a winter jacket), summer heat waves are more unbearable and last longer, we went from no serious issues with floods in the spring to a number of entire-towns-are-underwater levels of flooding...
Now some of these did happen before, but as an anomaly, definitely not something that happens multiple years in a row.
I think everyone has now fallen into the trap of mixing up weather with climate. We used to deride the deniers who said a cold snap meant global warming was fake, by pointing out that climate and weather are two different things. But more recently we point to every heat wave as evidence of climate change, every cold snap as well -- because 'more energy means more extremes!' Which may be entirely true, but it's hard to deny it looks like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
FWIW, back in 1974, the coldest day of that year was 12F. That would also be considered quite cold today. So that year hit some temperatures in both directions that would be noteworthy today, almost 50 years later.
It's not "doom and gloom because it hit 96F"
It's "doom and gloom because it hit 96F and it's only gonna get hotter"
You're why I think the world is doomed. We can't fix climate change when there's a bunch of people who want to be contrarians so bad they're willing to die over it.
And it swings the other way in the summer too. Yeah, it's Texas, its hot. Upper 90s most days in the peak summer time. Every now a bad summer with a lot of 100F days. Now every summer has streaks of well over 100F days. This summer alone has been the hardest one for me to experience here in my over thirty years in Texas.
And that's only for a brief window of time before sunrise. It's still in the 90s F at midnight most nights.
The perception of past weather patterns truly is unreliable, but I don't care if I can discern between temperature averages; the more common occurrence of extremes is what matters. I don't know how anyone can look at the reports of fires everywhere and not be certain this wasn't happening at this rate even few years ago.
That used to be a common claim, but it's past its expiration date. Extreme weather events are happening all over.
But we also have to remember that warming is not uniform across the planet, where I live the Berkeley Earth site [1] shows an average 2.5 C warming since the 1850s.
It is especially visible if your regular winter temperatures go below 0 C, but not much. Even 1-2 C warming may be seen as a much smaller snow coverage than before.
Separately, I wonder if a geoengineering megaproject is more likely to be funded than small incremental changes due to politicians perceiving more immediate ROI, peer clout, and poll ratings.
Do you honestly see them changing in the following years? We had Paris 8 years ago and the only thing that caused a small, one-year dip in our emissions was a deadly pandemic...
In other words: we can't seem to make a change unless given a direct and immediate threat on a global scale.
That's hard to imagine, because Norway exported a huge amount of pollution to the rest of the world in order to finance their current policy of green technology adoption. Not everyone has that nice ratio of oil and tiny population.
That's actually the whole deal, even if policies change drastically in the right direction we're still completely screwed. Not quite as screwed but still not notably less. If we stopped our civilization covid-style on a dime and didn't emit any greenouse gasses at all from now on, we're still mostly screwed in the near term. Delayed effects are a bitch.
And policies will only gradually change at best, only after the effects are plainly seen and when it's laughably beyond too late.
Though obviously subsidizing those technologies would hasten their takeover.