Class of '26

By Rick McKee 

Save the world

By Patrick Chapatte 

Cost of extreme weather quadruples in 40 years

[And that's in inflation-adjusted terms]

 From Inside Climate News

A new analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund that looks at the cost of climate-linked natural disasters details how the financial impacts of fires, tropical storms, floods, droughts and crop freezes have quadrupled since 1980. 

The number of extreme weather disasters has more than doubled in 40 years.

And the cost has quadrupled

[This is just a quick summary.  You can read the full article here.]

It's becoming clearer and clearer that the costs of climate change and global heating are beginning to far exceed the costs of preventing further climate change.  As global temperatures rise, the costs will rise too--exponentially.

How sensitive is the climate to a doubling of CO2?

From ClimateCrocks.

Climate change is real, caused by human activity and a serious problem that needs to be addressed. In a new study published last week, which one of us helped author, we’ve gotten a better understanding of exactly how serious. The good news is that some of the worst-case scenarios seem a bit less likely than before. The bad news is that it’s clearer than ever that warming will not be mild or modest in a world where we fail to cut emissions rapidly.

Climate scientists have been trying to narrow down how, exactly, the climate will respond to increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) for well over a century. We call this “climate sensitivity” — in essence, how sensitive the climate is to our emissions. In 1979 a major report suggested that global surface temperatures would ultimately rise somewhere between 2.7 and 9.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius) if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was doubled. Thirty-five years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave the same range in their most recent assessment report.

A four-year effort led by 25 experts in the field has finally been able to give us a better understanding of how sensitive the climate actually is. By combining lines of evidence from physics-based studies, historical temperature records and records from the Earth’s more distant past — such as during the last ice age — we find that if the amount of CO2 doubles in the atmosphere, the world will likely warm between 4.7F and 7F (2.6C and 3.9C).  

Such warming may not sound too bad — after all, what difference does a few degrees make? A lot, it turns out. If we go back to the depths of the last ice age, 20,000 years ago, we find that the global average temperature of Earth was only about 9F (5C) colder than today. That was enough of a difference to lower sea level by 300 feet and build up ice sheets thousands of feet thick covering much of North America. That Earth was basically a different planet.  

We now know that a worst-case scenario of high future emissions and high sensitivity risks warming comparable to the warming since the end of the last ice age, occurring over the next one or two centuries. That would impose extremely difficult challenges to human society and natural ecosystems.

It is not inevitable that we will double carbon dioxide in our atmosphere — we control whether we do better or worse than that. We can cut our emissions rapidly enough to avoid doubling CO2 this century, given the political will to do so, and still limit warming below the internationally agreed-upon guardrail value of 3.6F (2C). Alternatively, if our emissions continue increasing, we could end up tripling rather than just doubling atmospheric CO2 by the end of the 21st century. How much warming occurs is up to us, and by narrowing the range of climate sensitivity, we now have a better idea of the consequences of our actions.
On the emissions front we have some reason for modest optimism. Over the past decade, the world has made progress on bending down the emissions curve. Global carbon dioxide emissions are still rising, but only at half the rate they were in the 2000s. [I don't know where they get that from.  See here] The world’s use of coal peaked in 2013 and has been declining. We succeeded in making clean energy less expensive, and carbon-free sources now provide more energy than coal worldwide. Nightmare scenarios where global emissions triple by the end of the century now seem far less likely, as we see them near a plateau.

At the same time, there is an ever-growing gap between where we are today and the emissions reductions needed to limit warming to globally agreed-upon targets. CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere over time, so simply stopping emissions from increasing does not stop the world from warming. Peak emissions — which we will hopefully see this decade — are only the first and easiest step on the long road to zero emissions.

At this point, our findings rule out scenarios where warming ends up being minor, but it also makes some truly catastrophic outcomes less likely. This means that how bad climate change will be rests firmly in our hands. To minimize the risk to future generations, it is crucial to control the one thing we can: our future emissions.

[Dr Zeke Hausfather is the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute. Dr Andrew Dessler is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University.]

    From The Conversation.

At the dawn of the industrial revolution, the Earth’s atmosphere contained 278 parts of CO₂ per million. Today, after more than two and a half centuries of fossil fuel use, that figure is around 414 parts per million (ppm). If the build-up of CO₂ continues at current rates, by 2080 it will have passed 560 ppm – more than double the level of pre-industrial times.


Exactly how the climate will respond to all this extra CO₂ is one of the central questions in climate science. Just how much will the climate actually change?


A major new international assessment of the Earth’s climate sensitivity, now published in the journal Reviews of Geophysics, addresses this question. This research has improved our understanding of how much the world will eventually warm if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is maintained at double the level of pre-industrial times.


While an exact figure is still not possible, low levels of warming are now found to be far less likely than previously thought. Very high values are slightly less likely too. There is much greater certainty that, if left unchecked, global warming would be high enough to bring very severe impacts and risks worldwide.


[Sensitivity] can be estimated using three main lines of evidence:

• Temperature measurements made with thermometers from 1850 (when enough global coverage began) to the near present. By comparing temperatures, CO₂ levels and the effect of other climate drivers in the past and present, we can estimate the longer-term changes.
• Evidence from paleoclimate records from the peak of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, when CO₂ was lower than now, and a warm period around 4 million years ago when CO₂ was more comparable to today. We can tell how warm the climate was and how much CO₂ there was in the atmosphere based on the make-up of gases trapped in air bubbles in ancient ice cores.
• Present-day observations – for instance from satellite data – and evidence from climate models, theory and detailed process models that examine the physics of interactions within the climate system.

Global heating assessments for a doubling of CO₂

The ranges estimated in the chart above are wide.  But if you take the centrepoint of the assessments, it is 3 degrees C or more.  This would be catastrophic. We have to stop atmospheric CO₂ doubling.  It's as simple as that.

More of a howl

From an interesting article by Julia Steinberger, on Medium.  You can read the full article here, but I have only used the four charts she provides, because they tell the whole story.

To stop global temperatures rising, we must cut emissions of CO₂ to zero.  And we are not.  Emissions are actually increasing.

Covid: a tale of two states

From Open Mind (Tamino):

Disastrous.

Rocky Rex's Science Stuff: Climate Change - The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Max...

Rocky Rex's Science Stuff: Climate Change - The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Max...: The geological record contains examples of major temperature changes, associated with changes in atmospheric CO2. For example, the   PETM...

Tropical cyclones have become more destructive

Two severe tropical cyclones over northern Australia. Analysis of satellite records from 1979 to 2017 has found a clear rise in the most destructive storms, in keeping with climate predictions about global heating. Photograph: Nasa Earth Observatory/EPA

From The Guardian:

Tropical cyclones have become more intense around the globe in the past four decades, with more destructive storms forming more often, according to a study that further confirms the theory that warming oceans would drive more dangerous cyclones.

Analysis of satellite records from 1979 to 2017 found a clear rise in the most destructive cyclones – also known as hurricanes or typhoons – that deliver sustained winds in excess of about 185km/h.

Experts told Guardian Australia the finding was in line with climate model predictions and the knowledge that increasing ocean temperatures gave tropical storms more energy.  Dr Hamish Ramsay, a senior research scientist at CSIRO who studies cyclones, said: “This study confirms what the climate models have been predicting for some time – that the proportion of the most intense storms will increase as the climate warms.”

While climate scientists have long predicted that global heating would deliver stronger cyclones, a trend that was statistically significant has been challenging to identify in part due to the natural swings in the world’s climate masking changes.

Published in the leading journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was carried out by scientists at the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The scientists did not try to find a cause for the increase in more dangerous cyclones, but said the trends were consistent with understanding of physics and modelling, and the finding “increases confidence that [tropical cyclones] have become substantially stronger, and that there is a likely human fingerprint on this increase”.

The probability of a cyclone reaching wind speeds greater than 185km/h had risen by about 15% over the 39 years studied.

“[The study] suggests that the climate change signal in the data is potentially already emerging and this is something that climate scientists have been saying for some time,” Ramsay said. “We maybe at a point now where we are starting to evidence from observational data that supports what the models have been telling us.”

Ramsay said as well as increasing the wind speeds in cyclones, warming oceans would also likely see cyclones delivering more rainfall. There was still uncertainty as to whether the numbers of all categories of cyclones would rise or fall under climate change.

Previous research has found that when cyclones form, they are tending to move more slowly, while delivering more rain.

Dr Greg Holland, a senior scientist emeritus at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, has studied cyclones for about 40 years.  The Melbourne-based scientist said while there were legitimate arguments over the finer details of trends and intensity in relation to tropical cyclones: “The work all points in the same direction – the proportion of the most intense cyclones is going up.”

He said: “There is nobody saying the trend will go the other way. The physics has been well set out for 30 or 40 years. If you get a warmer ocean then the intensities of cyclones goes up. That’s a 5% or 10% increase in maximum winds for every 1C of warming in the ocean. The world is warming and its because we have put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

[Read more here]

Listen up townies

Bushfire smoke in Eden, NSW.  Source: The Guardian

The latest thing from denialists is that the Ozzie fires are caused by "greenies" not allowing burn offs.  This is comparable to Lord Cheeto's dictum that the California fires were caused because they "don't sweep the leaves off the forest floor'.  It's utter twaddle.  Anything to avoid admitting that they were wrong, that climate change is happening NOW, and is causing catastrophes.  

From a Twitter thread by Sam Connor

Listen up townies. You’re driving us nuts. Backburning is done by firefighters in a fire. Hazard reduction - ‘burn offs’, ‘controlled burns’ - is done to reduce fuel load BEFORE everything is on fire. Nobody resists it. And it’s a decision by fire control on local councils.

You just make yourselves sound ill informed when you spruik this absolute rubbish about who is making decisions about burns. Unless it’s a national park, it’s done by people from the country, in the country, of all political affiliations, in concert with each other.

It isn’t made by your ‘local greenie’ whatever that means - generally, decisions are made by the people in charge of fires in your local government authority. Including decisions about harvest bans, total fire bans, when it’s safe to burn, when you need a permit.

You’re only allowed to burn off when it’s safe. You can do it yourself (farmers set fire to stubble after cropping) or you can get your local vollies to do it. But listen, it depends on when it’s safe. If there’s a big fuel load and it’s hot and dry, then they won’t let you.

There have been many controlled burns that have gotten away from people and they have started fires.  This is not ‘arson’ but it is classified as ‘deliberately lit’.  You townies need to learn that shit too. People also light things up using machinery or angle grinders.

NONE OF THIS IS NEW. What IS new is that we have a far smaller window of opportunity to safely burn off. It used to be a far longer period of time. In Vic they did something like 30% of what they’d usually do last year because conditions. Because climate change.

The other thing is that the extended drought means everything is tinder dry. No rain means no moisture in the soil. The trees have no moisture in them. Add hot days, big fuel load, searing winds, you have a recipe for unprecedented natural disaster.

There ARE other effects that take place like fire creating their own weather systems and lightning and more fires and also a thing that’s related to no trees and lots of cleared areas but I’m pretty sure they’re too complicated for people who can’t understand ‘backburning’.

All these nasty little insinuations by people about around #ItsTheGreensFault/Greenies/ferals/badly dressed bushfire survivors/whatever aren’t evidenced by anything. Please do some reading, educate yourself or stick to saving your inner city tomato plants on your balcony.

Regards, all the pissed off people who live in bushfire regions. @ABCthedrum  can you make someone tell Australia this, I’m going mad and so is every regional person watching inner city commentary on the interwebs right now

I lived in a forest for 27 years, and I can confirm all she says.  You can't do burn-offs in mid-winter—the forest's too wet.  You can't do them is summer—it's too dry.  That leaves autumn and spring.  And in a drought year, even in autumn, the forests might be too dry.  In spring, you need careful timing.  Early on, it can still be too wet.  But it dries out very quickly.  And if there is wind, well, you have to postpone.

Here is the Green Party's statement on hazard reduction:

The Australian Greens support hazard reduction burns and backburning to reduce the impact of wildfire when guided by the best scientific, ecological and emergency service expertise. 

Attempts by right-wing pundits and politicians to place the blame on the Greens represent the worst kind of dishonest politics. The Coalition has spent six years in office ignoring the chief cause – severe climate change,

Climate change means that bushfire season is starting earlier, that forests and grasslands are drier, igniting more easily and burn more readily, and that there are more and more days of very high, severe, extreme and catastrophic fire risk. The major cause of climate change is the mining, burning and exporting of coal, oil and gas.

Leading emergency service organisations aren't just talking about fuel reduction or backburning anymore, they're talking about climate change.  The overwhelming scientific consensus is that Australia's fire season is growing longer and more intense due to the effects of climate change.

Let's deal with the real cause, shall we? CO2 and methane emissions.

Cockies falling dead from the trees

From Martine Maron (Applied ecologist @ The University of Queensland. Deputy director, Threatened Species Recovery Hub. Conservation policy, biodiversity offsets, woodland birds):

48.9 degrees C on the farm (western Vic) yesterday. Cockies falling dead from the trees. People and wildlife cannot withstand the extremes we are already experiencing and this is just 1 degree of warming. We are on track for more than 4. 

The sulphur-crested cockatoo is an iconic Ozzie bird, found across Australia, and well adapted to the Australian climate and its hot summers.  If cockies are dying from the heat, things are grim indeed. 

Broken records

From Ben See

Hottest months ever recorded (2016 was an El Niño year, 2019 is not) :

And these broken records are just the beginning. It is going to get much much worse.

2019 to be second hottest year ever

We now have data for the first 10 months of 2019.  The 12 months to October 2019 were the second hottest ever recorded in the record going back to the 1880s, so it is very likely 2019 will also be the second hottest ever recorded.  This is not an El Niño year like 2015 or 1998, which is normally when records tend to get broken.  Note how after 1998, it took 12 years for that record to be broken.  After the latest El Niño, temperatures have risen so fast we are already at risk of new record temperatures even without an El Niño.  Note that all the hottest years have been in the last five years.

This is what the 5 year moving average looks like.  The decadal rate of rise in temps has increased, from 0.2 C/decade to 0.3 C/decade.  Too early to say whether this is the new trend, but it would be perfectly consistent with the acceleration in the level of emissions.  At 0.3 C/decade global temperatures will have risen 3.5 degrees C from pre-industrial levels by 2100.  And that will have catastrophic consequences.

Source: NOAA

We're going to miss our targets

From The Economist:

In 2015, 188 countries voluntarily committed themselves to plans to curb emissions. These targets will probably be missed.    The world's climate goals are not sufficient.  They are also likely to be unmet.

Our collective stupidity, greed, and fecklessness are guaranteeing a rise of 3 to 4 degrees C by 2100 above pre-industrial levels.  A catastrophe.

Climate change: a timeline