Yves here. As Helene and Milton deliver a one-two punch to the Southeast US, and many parts of the world are besieged by record-setting heat and community and crop wrecking floods, a new study provides further confirmation that we can’t afford more climate inaction or rationalizations. Exceeding the 1.5°C global temperature increase boundary will have very very long lived effects and is likely to trigger cascades like methane release from melting permafrost.
By Jessica Corbett, a staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
ust over a month away from the next United Nations climate summit, a study out Wednesday warns that heating the planet beyond a key temperature threshold of the Paris agreement—even temporarily—could cause “irreversible impacts.”
The 2015 agreement aims to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, relative to preindustrial levels.
“For years, scientists and world leaders have pinned their hopes for the future on a hazy promise—that, even if temperatures soar far above global targets, the planet can eventually be cooled back down,” The Washington Postdetailed Wednesday. “This phenomenon, known as a temperature ‘overshoot,’ has been baked into most climate models and plans for the future.”
As lead author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner said in a statement, “This paper does away with any notion that overshoot would deliver a similar climate outcome to a future in which we had done more, earlier, to ensure to limit peak warming to 1.5°C.”
“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages,” stressed Schleussner, an expert from Climate Analytics and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis who partnered with 29 other scientists for the study.
The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, states that “for a range of climate impacts, there is no expectation of immediate reversibility after an overshoot. This includes changes in the deep ocean, marine biogeochemistry and species abundance, land-based biomes, carbon stocks, and crop yields, but also biodiversity on land. An overshoot will also increase the probability of triggering potential Earth system tipping elements.”
“Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to millennia even if long-term temperatures decline,” the study adds, projecting that every 100 years of overshoot could lead seas to rise nearly 16 inches by 2300, on top of more than 31 inches without overshoot.
The scientists found that “a similar pattern emerges” for the thawing of permafrost—ground that is frozen for two or more years—and northern peatland warming, which would lead to the release of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane. They wrote that “the effect of permafrost and peatland emissions on 2300 temperatures increases by 0.02ºC per 100 years of overshoot.”
A paper in @Nature raises concerns about the growing use and acceptance of climate overshoot scenarios, in which warming is allowed to temporarily increase past the Paris 1.5 °C limit. https://t.co/OYaLS2BZo9 pic.twitter.com/IM2zR2UdVU
— Nature Portfolio (@NaturePortfolio) October 9, 2024
“To hedge and protect against high-risk outcomes, we identify the geophysical need for a preventive carbon dioxide removal capacity of several hundred gigatonnes,” the authors noted. “Yet, technical, economic, and sustainability considerations may limit the realization of carbon dioxide removal deployment at such scales. Therefore, we cannot be confident that temperature decline after overshoot is achievable within the timescales expected today. Only rapid near-term emission reductions are effective in reducing climate risks.”
In other words, as co-author and Climate Analytics research analyst Gaurav Ganti, put it, “there’s no way to rule out the need for large amounts of net negative emissions capabilities, so we really need to minimize our residual emissions.”
“We cannot squander carbon dioxide removal on offsetting emissions we have the ability to avoid,” Ganti added. “Our work reinforces the urgency of governments acting to reduce our emissions now, and not later down the line. The race to net-zero needs to be seen for what it is—a sprint.”
While the paper comes ahead of COP29, the U.N. conference in Azerbaijan next month, co-author Joeri Rogelj looked toward COP30, for which governments that have signed the Paris agreement will present their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to meet the climate deal’s goals.
“Until we get to net-zero, warming will continue. The earlier we can get to net-zero, the lower peak warming will be, and the smaller the risks of irreversible impacts,” said Rogelj, a professor and director of research for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “This underscores the importance of countries submitting ambitious new reduction pledges, or so-called ‘NDCs,’ well ahead of next year’s climate summit in Brazil.”
New study: “blowing past climate goals is more dangerous than it originally seemed”. My sense is that they are right. There are many tipping points in the climate system that might become irreversible except on very long timescales. https://t.co/8gHJpnlEaI
— Jonathan Overpeck (@GreatLakesPeck) October 9, 2024
The U.N. said last November that countries’ current emissions plans would put the world on track for 2.9°C of warming by 2100, nearly double the Paris target. Since then, scientists have confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year in human history and warned that 2024 is expected to set a new record.
The study in Nature was published as Hurricane Milton—fueled by hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico—barreled toward Florida and just a day after another group of scientists wrote in BioScience that “we are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.”
Those experts emphasized that “human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10%.”
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Our élite overloads have been in denial up to now, and unfortunately, I see no reason to believe their state of denial will end anytime soon.
Only direct knock-on consequences might change this, such as every last member of their staff fleeing their posts to save themselves, leaving the panic’d oligarchs stuck alone in their unmanned private jets and limousines, stranded far from the burning tarmac.
Where are the staff members going to flee? How are they going to make a living? The only way they are going to flee if it’s an extinction level event like an asteroid hitting earth just like that Netflix movie, Don’t Look Up.
Staff deserting their boss and/or ecoterrorists shooting down planes (Ministry of the Future) are nothing more than revenge porn fantasies. Some of the oligarchs are dumb, but others will have the foresight to make sure that staff members critical to their survival are taken care of, family members included.
When it comes to the climate, I will admit that I am selfish i.e. I just don’t care anymore. My most immediate concern is the world running out of fossil fuel in the next 30 40 years. If that prediction turns out to be true, we’ll start killing each other way before 2100, probably starting sometime in 2035.
Yep. Extinction level event. I.e., it won’t happen until the bitter end.
My layman’s prediction would be that we’re going to have serious food supply issues before we run out of fossil fuels. E.g., I believe you’re in Indonesia:
https://thediplomat.com/2024/02/indonesia-embraces-new-thinking-amid-rice-crisis/
Earth Impact Effects Program
I’ve been considering how genocidal elites might slingshot a rock around the sun to mimic the extinction effect of killer asteroids. It started with this section of Chanur’s Homecoming:
> He means an attack directly on the world. That’s the kind of kif we’re dealing with. One large C-charged rock, hitting Anuurn, before Anuurn can see it coming, gods know. It was a threat.
The kif are the sociopathic species willing to consider genocide as leverage. We’re firemonkeys, we don’t need other species, we have genocidal elites and megalomania. All they have to do is be in a deep hole (or in orbit) long enough to ride out the downside.
Working with the Impact Effects Program, it becomes clear an airblast wouldn’t be enough for a quick purge. Have to go with dust in the wind. I put in a hundred meter iron projectile doing a header into the earth’s path and got 50 cm (20″) of ejecta a thousand kilometers away. That’s workable, but the uncertainty would be how long the dust is in the air. Previous killer asteroids went about 15 years for this, which is doable, but inconvenient. Can go smaller, maybe have multiple projectiles.
All you need is a megalomaniac billionaire with launch capability.
The only good thing about about climate change getting worse is that USA will start to concentrate on their own country. I have never seeing a country population concentrate on other countries as much as USA population while most of them dont have a clue about geographic
The great problem is that U.S. foreign policy is based on control of oil. That is a major reason why it has resisted making any attempt to meet the Paris Club’s goals, and will not.
Control of oil has been a major reason for America’s Oil Wars in the Near East, from Israel to Iraq, Syria and Libya. Wars accelerate global warming.
And for the German greens, coal and deforestation are the fuels of the future, as a result of its pro-war anti-Russian hatred by the leaders sponsored by the US National Endowment for Democracy.
Not to speak of the threatened effects of atomic bombs.
Thank you and we’ll put, although I would hazard our biggest problem is that climate forces have been put into motion that we cannot control.
>Control of oil has been a major reason for America’s Oil Wars in the Near East, from Israel to Iraq, Syria and Libya. Wars accelerate global warming.
If a carbon free energy source were to appear tomorrow, it would be interesting to hear the reasons why we should still be meddling in the Mideast. Or Venezuela. The need for our huge defense spending then? Still need to counter Russia? China?
Never mind the issue of the shock of adapting to an economy not based on petroleum anymore.
“The great problem is that U.S. foreign policy is based on control of oil…”
Importantly so, but control of oil is about to elude the US. Simply look to BRICS and BRICS+: Russia, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran; Algeria is a member country of the BRICS bank. Likely Venezuela will soon become part of BRICS+. China, which is the largest economy globally, is now essentially energy self-sufficient, even though importing fuels…
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-10-08/China-s-first-F-class-heavy-duty-gas-turbine-completes-ignition-test-1xxb9FTxLdm/p.html
October 8, 2024
China’s first 300MW F-class heavy-duty gas turbine completes ignition test
China’s domestically produced 300-megawatt F-class heavy-duty gas turbine successfully completed its ignition test in Shanghai on Monday, marking a significant advancement in the nation’s gas turbine technology.
Known as the “crown jewel” of the equipment manufacturing industry, the heavy-duty gas turbine can operate for a long time in environments of high temperature, high stress and high corrosion, making it the core equipment for power plants.
This 300-megawatt F-class heavy-duty gas turbine consists of five major systems and over 50,000 components and is the first domestically developed heavy gas turbine in China with the highest power output and technical grade. It will serve as an important force driving the development of the high-end equipment manufacturing industry…
I think the most obvious irreversible change is the melting of glaciers. Few people know or understand that China, India, Pakistan and other countries around the Himalayas are highly dependent on the meltwater of the “third icecap” of the glaciers in the Himalayas.
The current estimate is that the glaciers could lose up to 80% of their water by 2100. But given the absolute non-linear nature of climate change (& the non-linear growth of all GHG emissions), I would expect that a large part of that reduction to happen faster and sooner, possibly within a generation, like with most predictions in the climate space.
And that ice won’t come back for 1000s of years even if we somehow magically pump/remove gigatons of carbon with some amazing laws of physics/thermodynamics defying technology that will never come into being. Carbon removal will always be a marginal tech because there is neither the will or the money to do what is actually necessary at the scale required over a multi-generational timeframe. And even if my pessimism & cynicism are completely misplaced, the ice will keep disappearing for decades, if not longer, into any carbon removal scheme.
And what happens when a major, primary watershed for billions of people in multiple nuclear armed states becomes a bone of contention between them. Migration and war and of course, biblical levels of mass death for humans and many other animal species.
And the Nature article spurring this discussion and reckoning is deeply anodyne, staying within the paradigm of linearized effects for inherently non-linear processes which gives the implication to many feeding into the delusional beliefs that this is still all somehow manageable and controllable by humans.
China/India won’t stand for it. If they see continued inaction they will just go ahead and geo-engineer a stratospheric earth-surrounding sulfate-particle shroud. And keep maintaining it with renewed injections in order to keep the Third Pole glaciers protected.
Several months ago I came across a YouTube interview done by an Indonesian, I think it was, with Steven Chu, American physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate. Chu expressed the belief that overshoot above 1.5 C could be corrected by large-scale carbon capture. I doubt it, but one never knows when something surprising might happen.
A different view is expressed by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen in An Inconvenient Apocalypse, which I am currently reading. Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas says
I went to Sunday School in the mid-20th century and think I understand their secular use of these concepts. I expect much – most – of what humans have built and invented and learned and created to be swept away in the decades to come. Will the species remain? Probably, unless things get really hinky. What else? And how can one act now to maximize the long-term well-being of humankind and the living planet? Big questions.
The interview with Steven Chu which I saw – posted November 15, 2023 – with Gita Wirjawan is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4LE-SGLAMU
A few weeks ago he gave the Beckman-Brown Lecture at the University of Illinois
“The challenges in getting to net-zero GHG emissions”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXAz2RHmE78
Greta Thunberg made her debut at COP24. People may criticize her approach or demeanor but her understanding and demand that fossil fuels must remain in the ground, as much as possible and as soon as possible, were and still are dead on balls accurate. As we are seeing now, it is simply the only thing that matters.
Since COP24, instead of pursuing this goal, what we have witnessed is mostly twisting, turning and scheming by the fossil fuel and related industries together with their government lackeys to ignore this fundamental reality. But without this emphasis and determination at the heart of climate change mitigation efforts, they are simply window dressing to preserve the status quo while hoping that the problem will just go away. And here we are with time nearly up, laying fully exposed to the full force of cascading and ever increasing global warming effects.
It’s not enough, I would say, to simply nourish the garden, the hope. You also have to pull the weeds or they will undermine everything you do.
Greta Thunberg is a hero environmentalist, who understands that dealing with repression and war is necessary for environmental rescue and sustaining:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/04/greta-thunberg-arrested-at-gaza-war-protest-in-copenhagen
September 4, 2024
Greta Thunberg arrested at Gaza war protest in Copenhagen
Climate activist one of six detained by police after students block university building in Danish capital
She understands noting. She is a village idiot that MSM uses for distracting the masses. A celebrity, if you will.
a celebrity yes….sometimes village idiots serve to coddle the herd
Firstly, some of the figures I’ve seen suggest that we’ve already exceeded 1,5%. Certainly carbon dioxide levels are way, way above the level needed to attain that.
Secondly, my outdated browser cannot access the original document, but nothing in the article mentions methane, especially that generated by husbandry, which I’ve heard is a massive (30-40%?) part of global warming.
Thirdly, if we are to generate enough electricity through wind and solar energy to power our economies, we are going to have to build a vast amount of renewable capacity, much of which will have to be replaced every year, along with vast amounts of new systems such as solar-powered smelting plants, public transport systems, etc., etc., all of which will require vast energy inputs which at present require fossil fuels. So we will have to burn vast amounts more carbon in order to put ourselves in a position to stop burning carbon. I see no sign that the report addresses that.
Thirdly, I don’t like the source — sorry, but I wouldn’t trust the Washington Post to tell me the time of day correctly on an issue in which oligarchs are actively engaged in profiteering — and I’m worried that a lot of climatologists have actively softpedalled the dangers of global warming (understating the impacts which we see around us and many of which were only predicted for 2050 or so), seemingly because the oligarchs were worried that too much doomcrying would hurt their profiteering. Maybe this is unfair, but it certainly looks true from atop a hill in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
” Secondly, my outdated browser cannot access the original document, but nothing in the article mentions methane, especially that generated by husbandry, which I’ve heard is a massive (30-40%?) part of global warming.”
Often cattle are falsely blamed for atmospheric methane. That claim, was a brilliant false flag operation by the “clean” “natural” gas hoax climate denial machine along with some similarly hinky data from the Vegan folks.
Turns out, excepting old style concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), cattle operations have little to no net methane output into the atmosphere, as soil and surface organisms can process these hydrocarbons. A seaweed food additive in the cow stomachs may even take care of that small methane footprint.
Better, large carbon sequestration and no net methane are often the case using optimized “Carbon Cowboy” type perennial plant diverse healthy soil cattle operations.
This may also apply to Permaculture husbandry and Holistic Management method. These also focus on a healthy soil biomes and involve encouraging rich soil microorganisms as well as plants gaining nitrogen from multiple manure animal inputs.
Cattle can also be raised on hilly land and therefore not displace any cropland production.
It seems that the extra methane found in flyovers gas analysis is from leaking buried gas pipes. This is the real HUGE stinking muddy quagmire. Gas pipes and information pertaining to them, are often not maintained. Maps of the complex web of gas pipes are often “lost on purpose” so the fiscally sound previous owners avoid fire and pollution expenses. Often the last owners are tiny low budget companies without assets having legal responsibility.
Avoiding cleaning up or properly hundreds of thousands of poorly capped oil and gas wells, is a related problem. Many are ‘strategically abandoned’ wellheads leaking large amounts of methane. The Fracked wells are often water poisoned nightmares that can cost billions to properly decommission, and so seldom are.
I have come to believe that “climate change” (the focus-grouped substitute for global warming, facilitated by Frank Luntz if memory serves) is not the real problem at all. It is more of a symptom, one among many, of the basic problem of too many human beings on Planet Earth.
There are simply too many human beings, who need and/or want too many things, too much “stuff,” to be sustainable in the long or even medium term. We are already well along the way to eliminating most other living beings to support ourselves, but even if we eliminate those others entirely, we would still overrun the physical resources needed to sustain this civilization. Even 1 billion would probably be too many.
It’s almost inconceivable that enough people will realize this in time to do anything about it. It can’t be 52 percent of the people who do, it can’t be 60 or 70 or 90 percent; it would have to be more like 99 percent of everybody on the planet.
And “green” energy isn’t going to help. In fact, it only makes the problem worse. I’ve shared this here before, but it can’t be mentioned too often. This issue is well documented in Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.
I hate to be so gloomy. I don’t want things to be this way, really I don’t, but they are.
I consider this the lazy opinion of the PMC which prefers to see the problem as being too many “deplorables”, while in fact the one percent is the biggest producer of GHGs. Unfortunately the rest of us are bound hand and foot to the 1%. It makes more sense to look for ways to break the bonds to the 1%; their control of world opinion is already slipping. Increasing censorship only makes it more obvious. It comes down to the question of “who are you going to believe? The Media or your own two eyes?” Start by having regular discussions with your friends and neighbors using some of the resources mentioned in this article and commentary.
How don’t know how things are being measured, but it seems to me that 1.5 degrees Centigrade has been exceeded years ago.
Depends where the baseline is set. I understand there are differences of opinion on that.
From Arctic News The Paris Agreement called for a special report by the IPCC on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. In the report, the IPCC first defines pre-industrial as “the multi-century period prior to the onset of large-scale industrial activity around 1750”. Yet, the IPCC then proceeds to use the period 1850-1900 to “approximate” pre-industrial.
Let’s be honest – the whole “overshoot” concept is nothing more than a lazy attempt to allow things to continue as they are. There is no seriousness to the concept. The fact that anyone took this at face value only shows how bad things have become.
No serious inquiry would bother reporting results out to 2300.
Meat production is also something that’s a key contributor. I have heard of ranges from 20% to 60% of emissions directly contributing to global warming.
As a meat lover, I understand that it’s tough for humans to stop consuming meat. But, more education and reiteration of this impact will help with reducing consumption.
What was once a once-in-a-week treat ended up being a daily staple until recently for me, and I had to put in effort to switch to more selective consumption of meat.
It could be argued that any is too many. Everything about us is contrary to every other living thing on this planet.
Cloud albedo, a fun phrase that is not on many bingo cards, but may be of interest regarding climate and hurricane discussions. Nature.com study provides some details.
I did not read the Nature article closely that this post calls attention to. I am curious what kind of politics resulted in a 7-page article that boasts 30 authors. This statement from the abstract to this relatively short article in Nature does little to entice me to read further:
“To hedge and protect against high-risk outcomes, we identify the geophysical need for a preventive carbon dioxide removal capacity of several hundred gigatonnes. Yet, technical, economic and sustainability considerations may limit the realization of carbon dioxide removal deployment at such scales.”
Toss in the discussion of “overshoot scenarios” and that ices it for me. I was not aware of the notions of “overshoot” described in the post and Nature article. I cannot imagine seriously believing that heating the planet, whether above the arbitrary 1.5°C threshold or some other arbitrary threshold–even temporarily–would not cause “irreversible impacts.” I cannot become alarmed by that very predictable outcome. Recent extreme weather events have already worked considerable “irreversible impacts” on human, animal and plant populations around the world, with more promised for the future.
This post and the Nature article effectively conclude that unless we can believe in some sort of magical carbon dioxide removal systems the 1.5°C limit, whether a hard limit or squishy limit allowing “temporary” excesses, in short the 2015 Paris agreement, amounts to more hot air to contribute to its share to arriving at the Earth’s future new climate. That conclusion seemed plain from the time the agreement was reached.
Is there any reason to think that a Trump or a Harris Administration would have a different policy on carbon skydumping and hence how fast we break the 1.5 degree C barrier?
“The U.N. said last November that countries’ current emissions plans would put the world on track for 2.9°C of warming by 2100, nearly double the Paris target.”
That’s the funny thing about the climate, though – it keeps ignoring ‘tracks’ completely…
3.5-4.0 by 2100, my guess