By Thomas Neuburger
From James Hansen’s latest version of his latest paper, “Global Warming in the Pipeline,” we find this (emphasis mine):
Consistent analysis of temperature over the full Cenozoic era … implies that CO2 was 300–350 ppm in the Pliocene and about 450 ppm at transition to a nearly ice-free planet, exposing unrealistic lethargy of ice sheet models.
Keep that number — “450 ppm at transition to a nearly ice-free planet” — in mind as you read the following.
CO2 growth is accelerating
First, the latest CO2 data from NOAA monthly averages:
and a close look at recent data:
Note the peak at 424 ppm, and consider again: “Consistent analysis of temperature over the full Cenozoic era [implies] about 450 ppm at transition to a nearly ice-free planet.”
Like global warming itself, the rate of CO2 growth is accelerating. Decadal growth is now 2.4 ppm per year, up from 2 ppm in the previous decade.
CO2 levels through 2060
So let’s do the math. Assuming acceleration of annual growth — meaning, the world’s governments never reject fossil fuels — the decade of the 2020s could see CO2 growth of nearly 30 ppm per year; the 2030s, growth above 35 ppm per year; the 2040s, growth near 45 ppm per year; and so on.
That yields CO2 numbers like these:
2030 — 438 ppm (no accel.)
2040 — 463 ppm (no accel.)
2050 — 487 ppm (no accel.)
2030 — 444 ppm (with accel.)
2040 — 479 ppm (with accel.)
2050 — 522 ppm (with accel.)
Need we go on?
A ‘Chinese Century’?
That makes even predictions like these optimistic. In a dire thread that starts here, Ian Welsh writes this at the end:
By the 2080s? I think the nation-splitting chaos will start a lot sooner.
The above took hundreds of years. We’ll see the same, globally, in less than ten once the real crisis takes hold: the scramble for food, for high ground, against disease, and all the regional disasters that threaten integrated global life, like shipping of goods.
Will this generation dodge the bill for its climate failure? Or pay for its sins itself?
We’re going to need better leaders
I really do wish people would take this stuff seriously. By “people” I mean people with power.
Barring that, I wish people like us would remove those people-with-power, and pretty darn soon. We’re gonna need better leaders, and pretty darn soon.
I can Not Believe This, an Absolute Waist of Time & of a Creative Mind, while the WORLD IS BURNING UP. Well, she helped Legos and the Plastic Industry make a lot of money. This is what you call dumbing people down. It brings great sadness to me.
All generations since 1970 should take the blame. But only the final couple will pay the ultimate price. I'd say if you were born after 2020, you'll be in the mix for mankind's ending.
no generation at all will ever do shit about it.
"I wish people like us would remove those people-with-power, and pretty darn soon. We’re gonna need better leaders, and pretty darn soon."
If you run a graph of reverse slope to the one above showing the ongoing unabated climate catastrophe, you'll see the trendline showing the quality of the leaders that 155 million dumber than shit americans keep electing... since 1968 anyway. In 2016 the slope plummeted algorithmically and has not abated.
Fact is, we needed better leaders beginning with the 1968 election. But the parties puked up nixon and hhh. And those were the high point!!
Face it; we're not getting better leaders. Why? Because american voters are dumber than shit.
And voters all over the globe are dumber…
Before a group of TX oilmen in 2018, Obama TOOK CREDIT about the increased oil production that occurred every year during his presidency:
President Barack Obama took credit once again Tuesday for the U.S. oil-and-gas boom, even though critics have argued that the upswing in oil and natural gas production occurred in spite of his policies.
Mr. Obama told the audience at a gala for Rice University’s Baker Institute that he was “extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords” before saying “I know we’re in oil country and we need American energy.”
“You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the…