Yves here. While many of you were busy losing your mind over Trump’s smashes and grabs, the world continued to cook. Tom Neuburger, who has kept his eye on the climate change ball, chronicles how the relentless rise in temperatures continued in January.
And this development is a very big and bad deal. From the Financial Times, in a story above the fold, Hottest January on record shocks scientists:
Last month was the hottest January on record, surprising scientists who expected the cooling La Niña weather cycle in the tropical Pacific to slow almost two years of record-high temperatures.
January ranked as the third-hottest month globally on record, with a surface air temperature of 13.23C — 1.75C above the pre-industrial average — according to the Copernicus Climate Change service, the EU’s Earth observation agency.
The warming, despite the emergence of La Niña in December, is set to fuel concerns that climate change is accelerating at a time when countries such as the US, the world’s largest historical polluter, pull back on commitments to reduce emissions.
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL, said the January data was “both astonishing and, frankly terrifying”, adding: “On the basis of the Valencia floods and apocalyptic Los Angeles wildfires, I don’t think there can be any doubt that dangerous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown has arrived. Yet emissions continue to rise.”
By Tom Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
Image source: Pixabay
I’d like to analyze and report on the extraordinary events unfolding in the Trump administration, but it’s way too early for that. Musk and the childmen he leads may seem ascendant, but that may not last. Trump is swinging some serious international pipe, but he may be forced to back down, or the price to us may become unbearably high via a move away from the dollar as the world’s reference currency.
The domestic takeover grab is massive (see the first five minutes of this report), and no one knows if national Democrats will fight back effectively. Maybe they will, or not. Trump is throwing a ton of new plans at the wall. Will half of it stick? Or most? Or not much at all?
We’re watching this closely, so stay tuned to this station, as they say. The broad systemic world is already different than most people’s view of it, and greater transformative change is on the way. As soon as the new takes shape, we’ll dig right in. But for now, we’re watching as things unfold by the day. Thanks for your patience.
Hottest January in Recorded Januaries
In the meantime, something that’s not too soon to predict is the coming climate “event,” the big bonanza, when nature and billionaire hubris will meet in the ring, and billionaires won’t walk out intact. (Wonder why billionaires are so eager to flee the earth? They’re escaping their mess.)
January 2025 just clocked in as the hottest January in recorded history. New Scientist:
January 2025 sets surprise record as hottest ever start to a year
Meteorologists expected global temperatures to start falling after record highs in 2023 and 2024 – instead January 2025 hit a new high
And a chart via Prof. Eliot Jacobson:
Notice that the previous hottest January in nearly forever was 2024. For good measure, here’s what’s happening in the Arctic — sea ice extent is finding new lows, again:
And here’s a visualization of change in Arctic sea ice volume (left) and thickness (right) from 1980-2024 via climatologist Zach Labe.
Ice-free Arctic, of course, accelerates everything, including methane emissions from Arctic permafrost, of which there is much. And an ice-free Arctic could be on its way sooner than anyone thinks. You could book an Arctic cruise as early as 2027, if that’s your thing.
A Word of Advice
Just a thought. If you’re under, say, fifty and living a healthy life, you might want to give think to where to live next. Especially if you have kids.
I’m not being snarky. The number of days above 100°F is due to change in hundreds of U.S. counties.
There are no visualizations that look much different, though some do look worse. Here’s Business Insider’s version of days above 125°F by 2053. Water will also be scarce in many states, and some regions won’t stop burning.
Seriously, think it through. The time to get out of a really bad situation is before the rest of the world gets the same idea. Again, just a thought.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v4/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
January 15, 2025
Average Global Temperature, 2024
(Degrees Celsius)
January ( 15.24) warmest January since 1880 *
February ( 15.42) warmest February
March ( 15.39) warmest March
April ( 15.31) warmest
May ( 15.16) warmest
June ( 15.24) warmest
July ( 15.20) warmest
August ( 15.30) warmest
September ( 15.23) 2nd warmest
October ( 15.33) 2nd warmest
November ( 15.29) 2nd warmest
December ( 15.26) 2nd warmest
Average ( 15.28) warmest year since 1880
* Warmth of the month and year since 1880
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494#abstract
February 3, 2025
Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?
By James E. Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, George Tselioudis, Joseph Kelly, Susanne E. Bauer, et al.
Abstract
Global temperature leaped more than 0.4°C (0.7°F) during the past two years, the 12-month average peaking in August 2024 at +1.6°C relative to the temperature at the beginning of last century (the 1880-1920 average). This temperature jump was spurred by one of the periodic tropical El Niño warming events, but many Earth scientists were baffled by the magnitude of the global warming, which was twice as large as expected for the weak 2023-2024 El Niño. We find that most of the other half of the warming was caused by a restriction on aerosol emissions by ships, which was imposed in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization to combat the effect of aerosol pollutants on human health. Aerosols are small particles that serve as cloud formation nuclei. Their most important effect is to increase the extent and brightness of clouds, which reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect on Earth. When aerosols – and thus clouds – are reduced, Earth is darker and absorbs more sunlight, thus enhancing global warming. Ships are the main aerosol source in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We quantify the aerosol effect from the geographical distribution of sunlight reflected by Earth as measured by satellites, with the largest expected and observed effects in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We find that aerosol cooling, and thus climate sensitivity, are understated in the best estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…
This: –
‘We find that most of the other half of the warming was caused by a restriction on aerosol emissions by ships, which was imposed in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization to combat the effect of aerosol pollutants on human health. Aerosols are small particles that serve as cloud formation nuclei. Their most important effect is to increase the extent and brightness of clouds, which reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect on Earth. When aerosols – and thus clouds – are reduced.’
Yes, this is often what is not fully understood, especially in the discussion over geoengineering. We are not conducting one bad experiment with our climate – we are conducting multiple climate engineering experiments simultaneously in a completely uncontrolled manner. The biggest one is driving warming (i.e. emitting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere), but we are also injecting many other gases and particles into the lower and upper atmosphere and the oceans, in addition to altering the radiance of the planet and interfering with the natural cycling processes, with all sorts of global, regional and local climate impacts, both cooling and heating, in addition to disturbing local weather patterns. We are like children let loose in a landmine factory.
Thank you for referencing this most recent[?] paper by Hansen et al. On a quick look it appears to build on the earlier paper: “Global warming in the pipeline” https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889 from 2023. However, what seems curious to me is the new publishing venue where this paper appears, as well as the complete absence of references to this paper on Hansen’s website at Columbia: https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/publications.shtml. I have wondered what happened to the stream of communications that Hansen had emailed via his Columbia website. Has Hansen retired from Columbia and found a new home, I am not sure where … or is something else going on?
Just received an email from Hansen’s communications website: “Global Warming Acceleration and Recovery” 6 February 2025 referring to the paper “Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?”. I cannot provide a link to Hansen’s communication because there is no pdf available for download yet from Hansen’s Columbia website. A few quotes from the communication:
“The present acceleration of global warming, which is especially great in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, makes it likely that the rate of ice melt will now accelerate, thus affecting the likelihood of shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and, in turn, the threat of large sea level rise.”
“Why do we say that global temperature will not go down much (i.e., the world is already at +1.5°C and 2025 will be warmer than the kibitzers expect) is only partly due to the ship aerosol forcing – it is due more to high climate sensitivity.”
“Given that our papers disagree with IPCC conclusions, it is not surprising that they generate reactions on social media.”
I suppose disagreeing with IPCC conclusions creates some issues for the publications from Hansen’s group.
This reference link is to the complete abstract and complete article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494#abstract
February 3, 2025
Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?
According to UAH satellite records January 2025 was 0.4C below January 2024, and the last 4 months temps have dropping quite a lot.
It would seem that the IMO determined that sulphuric aerosols that are potentialy harmful to humans should be reduced by regulation in the burning of ‘bunker’ fuel in international shipping . It would also seem that the reduction of aerosol emissions by shipping has contributed in some identifiable way to Global Warming and Climate Change which is also deemed by some as harmful to humans. Which is more or less harmful has not been discussed.
Nevertheless, to a numpty like me, it would seem that were a harmless to human aerosol be identified, the precursor of which could be added to bunker fuel for burning at sea, then emissions would, in the large part, be better than harmless to humans – at least in the short term. I hope this makes sense.
When I saw the phrase “aerosol emissions” I automatically thought of what certain groups call “chemtrails” or the more appropriate term Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) . There is dispute among many on whether there is a program being conducted right now, which purports to explain non-commercial planes crisscrossing the sky emitting what some say is water vapor and others say are various chemical compounds intended to block the sun and cool the planet. That there exist such plans, ongoing or contemplated, is not in dispute, the Guardian and other papers have reported on it and there are various patents as well (some owned by Bill Gates.)
Twitter/X has a plethora of pictures taken by people, like myself, of a sky that does not remotely resemble to one I grew up with, where puffy white cotton-like clouds floated on a beautiful blue. Instead, I see a gray’d, dimmed out, sky that is the result of man-made intervention, unintended or intended. At least Twitter/X provides a support group for people like me that are deeply troubled by climate change, of one form or another.
Yes. “Masking” is what those aerosols do. What these aerosols were doing is hiding the truth of how far along the “change” curve we’d already traveled. What they could do is buy us some time. What they are not is a one-off solution. Probably should have a plan to go along with their reintroduction.
I saw somewhere, maybe it was mentioned in the Hansen et al article linked by CA, that the sulphur aerosol are not particularly healthy and cause a few million deaths per year globally. So better to reduced CO2 or MH4 emissions than add back SO2 (or whatever form the sulphur is).
Not being discussed here is how far China has come with its coal particulate emissions cleaning and diesel and gas car/truck reductions by changing to EV. A podcast I listened to said that was a 3x larger reduction than the sulfur reduction in shipping.
Geo engineering actually works.
The Chinese have reduced particulate pollution their urban areas by around 40% over the past decade – mostly from closing older plant and tighter regulations on industrial plant. Coal use has steadily increased and the number of EV’s on the road is so far at least partly off-set by the continued growth in overall traffic (including ICE cars). Quantifying the impacts are quite difficult because there are far more sources of particulates over land and the interractions are quite complex (northern China has naturally high particulate levels due to prevailing winds from the central Asian deserts).
I’ve not seen any figures on it, but I would guess that while this reduction is significant globally, there are complicating features (I understand there may be differences in the ‘cooling’ effect over land and over sea). Plus of course, increasing pollution in India and elsewhere has partially balanced this out.
Re Coal Use:
There is evidence to support the assertion coal results in lesser GHG emissions than NG:
A recent series of studies and rebuttals have debated the greenhouse gas impacts of shale gas production as compared to coal. Here, Post Carbon Institute Fellow David Hughes, author of the groundbreaking report, “Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?”, provides an analysis of two conflicting studies. His conclusion: Shale gas is worse than coal for the climate over a 30-50 year time-frame, depending upon the technology used.
https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/life-cycle-ghg-shale-gas/
There was a more recent study that also came to the same conclusion but I have misplaced the URL.
A technologist here says there is a way to burn coal completely and that that does result in lower GHG emissions. But I must confess I did not get the name of the technique.
I suspect the reference may be to gasification techniques, where the coal is compressed under heat and pressure to produce a gas (this has been around a long time, it’s how coal gas was made). Theoretically, it can be used with some forms of carbon capture to be zero emissions, but so far it’s not economic. One interesting possibility is to mix exhaust gases with seawater and then directly inject it into fractured basalt, where it turns into carbonate and so is locked in permanently geologically.
No, he made it sound as if the coal was burned on a bed of air and the technique was new.
Could it be a new version of Fluidized Bed Combustion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidized_bed_combustion
https://www.electrical4u.com/fluidized-bed-combustion-types-and-advantages-of-fluidized-bed-combustion/#google_vignette
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/fluidized-bed-combustion
and a whole bunch of images for anyone who might want to go image-sourced URL diving.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrihPsQWaZn7QEACIFXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=fluidized+bed+combustion&fr=sfp
The only way I could imagine that this would result in less carbon skydumping is if it led to so much total efficiency at extracting every last bit of usable energy from burning the coal that less coal would need to be burned at all to get the same amount of electricity as before.
But if that is true, then Jeavons Paradox effects will set in and the electricity makers will jjust burn even more coal anyway, and keep driving carbon skydumping right back up.
Where I live January is typically between -10℃/-20℃. Yes this year there were days >0 with even a bit of rain. Nonsense. Now, beginning February it feels like around Easter, +3 around noon, -10 at night. Something is very very very wrong.
That said I saw there were fires in Caifornia. Very rejoicing. If most USA could burn like hell and the rest turn dry like Sahara, maybe it will keep Americans busy at home, and not killing people here and there. Or USA will launch war on Canada, in order to get water ?
Well . . . thank you for sending over your best and brightest to get the party started, eh?
Throwing my own wet blanket on this news, here in north central Connecticut the temperatures have been sub-freezing for going on ten weeks now with forecast for several more. This is typical of the weather of my childhood.
I had to order more firewood as my reserves were fading fast. I’ve already burned more than all of the last few seasons.
The snow line here in the southern Sierra held above 8,000 feet all of January, that’s a bit unusual.
The article mentions rising global January temps, arctic sea ice volume decline and the projection on additional 100 deg days in the US through 2053 (some areas mostly on the gulf coast are looking at 40+ days more over 100 annually).
Other items recently, the new annual record in CO2 level increase, 3.58 ppm for 2024 [ https://e360.yale.edu/digest/2024-carbon-dioxide-levels ], and the study by the London based actuarial society with univ of Exeter, looking at a drop in GDP of 50% 2050 to 2070 (honestly I doubt it will be a 50% drop all at once but more like an ongoing decline – so don’t count on great conditions between now and 2050!).
As anyone can imagine, impacts on this scale globally will totally transform human society. Right now it looks like ecological overshoot with billions of fatalities.
Kinda like the dark ages, we may want to set up a few monasteries to store the little knowledge humans have accumulated, to pass on to the future (that is, if the Earth remains habitable to larger mamals like humans).
One of the knock-on effects of the “climate whiplash” phenomenon is that more of current and future urban developments will be in areas at hazard from wildfire and flooding.
A new report from the Canadian Climate Institute breaks this down by province, and the outlook for British Columbia is particularly grim. Because of lax land use planning, especially regarding building on floodplains, we’re setting ourselves up for lots of future calamities.
Part of Trump’s smashing and grabbing involves a firm devotion to cooking the world as much even-faster as possible through the most possible drill-baby-drill and coal-baby-coal. That’s worth losing our minds over, as long as we can find our minds again and then use them to counter the TrumpAdmin’s efforts to increase carbon skydumping as much as it possibly can.
I wonder if the dems are regretting going for the right wing john bolton dick cheney CIA FBI censorship vote yet?
In a word, no.
And they just made the “good billionaires” guy head of the DNC.
Thomas
They regret nothing. They are non-regret-capable.
They learn nothing. They are non-learning-capable.
At least overall as a party.
If any Democrat officeholders , acting on their personal own as self-advancing political entrepreneurs and sensing the gravity of the hour, try doing something “real” which really has a real effect on deflecting the course of Elmo Twitler Musk’s hostile takeover of America; then those particular Democrats can be assessed for working with or voting for or not. The others, which don’t pass such a test, can be abandoned, run against, defeat-engineered one way or another.
New movements of new people and groups with new names and new purposes should be invented and launched. Let them all run Darwin’s Gauntlet to see which ones show promise.
Ban all cargo container ships. Aren’t they burning straight bunker oil?
“Ban all cargo container ships…”
This is an important point; but the Chinese are building clean running ships for all purposes now and China is the largest shipbuilder, counting for more than 50% of the global tonnage produced.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202412/1325383.shtml
December 19, 2024
China launches hydrogen-powered container ship, capable of sailing 380 kilometers
China has launched its first hydrogen-powered container ship, capable of carrying 64 standard containers, in Jiaxing, East China’s Zhejiang Province, marking a significant step in adopting green shipping solutions, China Media Group reported on Thursday.
The vessel, measuring 64.5 meters in length, has a capacity of 64 standard containers, equivalent to approximately 1,450 tons. Powered solely by two 240 kW hydrogen fuel cell systems, it has an operational range of 380 kilometers.
Producing zero emissions, the green vessel offers a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil-fuel powered vessels, which can reduce around 700 tons of carbon dioxide emission annually.
The vessel is equipped with a key hydrogen fuel cell system with a rated power of 240 kilowatts and the largest hydrogen fuel cell applied on a ship. Its hydrogen storage system can hold 550 kg of hydrogen, making it the largest capacity storage system used on a ship to date, chinanews.com.cn reported…
How much carbon was skydumped to produce the Hydrogen to fuel those ships? How much carbon was skydumped to produce the Hydrogen production systems used to produce that Hydrogen? How much carbon was skydumped to build the ships themselves?
A better answer would be to reduce international shipping from anywhere to everywhere to anywhere else as close to zero as feasibly possible. I don’t know how close that would be.
“How much carbon was skydumped to produce the Hydrogen to fuel those ships?”
China produces green hydrogen in massive volume.
https://english.news.cn/20230702/770ca333084b49529fdf7790a514a356/c.html
July 2, 2023
Mega green hydrogen project begins operations in China’s Xinjiang
URUMQI — China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group), China’s major oil refiner, on Friday announced that its 20,000-tonne-per-year green hydrogen plant in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has begun operations.
The new plant in Xinjiang’s Kuqa City is China’s first 10,000-tonne-level photovoltaic-based hydrogen production project. It is expected to set an example for the industry to realize carbon emissions reduction by tapping into the great potential of green hydrogen on a large scale, according to the group.
Construction started in March 2022, and the project mainly deals with photovoltaic power generation, power transformation, electrolytic hydrogen production, hydrogen storage and transportation, and has other supporting facilities.
It can store 210,000 cubic meters of hydrogen and transport 28,000 cubic meters of hydrogen every hour…
“How much carbon was skydumped to build the ships themselves?”
Do try to stop the bullying. I am not bullied.
Having a disdain for China is of no interest to me.
Do try to stop the false accusations. I am not falsely accused.
Do try to stop the hansbara and sales agentry for China. Your sales agentry and hansbara is of no interest to me.
Do try to stop accusing people of being racist. It is a typical woke tactic.
Having a disdain for genuine questions is of no interest to me. False accusations of having a “disdain for China” are of no interest to me and are nothing new for you.
I will keep raising legitimate genuine questions as much as I like.