Extreme Temperature Diary- December 18th, 2018/ Topic: Shoulda Coulda Woulda…Will We Put On The Carbon Pollution Brakes?

guyonclimate_mi5tor

Tuesday December 18th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😊. 

Should Coulda Woulda…Will We Put On The Carbon Pollution Brakes?

My long term readers know that by now I am a big fan of simple mathematical graphs that can show all important climatological data…not the “fake news” types, though, that cherry pick information. Such graphs encapsulate data pictorially getting messages across better than a 2000+ word essay. This week I was introduced to a new set involving emissions that you can peruse here for the Center For International Climate Research:  http://folk.uio.no/roberan/GCB2018.shtml

For today’s short post let’s examine one of the charts that all should become familiar with before the year 2020 shaming humanity for their lack of action on carbon pollution, which will also serve as a big warning and yet hope for winning the “Climate War:” 

Here we see how much emissions would have to be cut globally in order to bring the Earth’s mean temperature at or below the Paris Accord’s +2C above preindustrial conditions. Basically the later business as usual behavior goes on the harder the world will have to put on the brakes to keep the climate in tact. If a global agreement to stymie carbon pollution had been adhered to in the year 2000 only about a 2% cut per year for emissions would have been necessary to save the climate. Now that figure by 2019 has risen to 5%. Thereafter the figure rises very significantly.

Here is a lot of linked information on the Carbon Budget, or how much more carbon humanity can burn before the temperature of Earth gets above the +2.0C recommended limit: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/18/files/GCP_CarbonBudget_2018.pdf

These Nature graphics developed using data from the above Carbon Budget link have put me in a foul mood https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07585-6:

As of 2018 , unfortunately, emission rates are rising not falling. I don’t see how guidance by Paris will be followed starting in 2019 in light of U.S. policy, the rise of Bolsonaro in Brazil, the blowback from the French People on a “modest” gasoline tax, and more coal fired plants being built in India, Africa and elsewhere. Talk and flimsy agreements like what came out of COP24 from Poland is cheap. Getting on my soapbox, it appears that humanity will have to be hurt very badly before there will be a whole species reaction to stop climate change. This reaction may not occur until sometime in the future when it is too late for tipping factors not to go into effect. Just how bad conditions will have to get is a complete collective psychological unknown for the human race, but something for scientists very much worth studying.

Biblically we can look to the story of all of the plagues God manifested upon the Egyptians before they let the enslaved Israelites leave their country. It was not until the first born sons of the Egyptians were slain before Moses was allowed to take has people out of Egypt. As far as the climate goes we have had many a Moses warn us scientifically about the perils of weak mitigation efforts for decades. The chart I presented today is yet another such warning. We’ve already seen plenty of climate change related frogs like Hurricane Michael and locusts like California’s Paradise Fire plague our world. Let’s not wait until our water like the Nile from the biblical Exodus story changes to blood or worse. Let’s collectively do something before a new climate condemns of our progeny to be cut down just like the story of Exodus from millennia ago.

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Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:

 

 

 

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity.)

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The Climate Guy

One thought on “Extreme Temperature Diary- December 18th, 2018/ Topic: Shoulda Coulda Woulda…Will We Put On The Carbon Pollution Brakes?”

  1. Hello Climate Guy!

    First off, thank you for your work. I can’t think of anything more urgently needed.

    Once again, I’d like to encourage an exploration of the economics of collapse (Unfortuntly, this may be the plague needed to get us out of Egypt…if it’s not too late!)

    I saw that Zillow had done some analysis of home prices in low lying areas. There must be some economists somewhere looking at collapse issues seriously. Sure, I’ve heard talk of stranded assets with regards to Fossil fuels left in the ground….but, someone at some respected university must be looking at increasingly likely scenarios where there is no long term return on any asset.

    For example, who will offer 30 year mortgages once the climate makes it much more likely that there will not be 30 more years??? Who would build a factory, buy a stock, offer insurance, make a loan? Yes, dystopian to be sure, but some clear benchmarks could stir the very action we need to have a chance to turn this ship!

    I ask this because if plagues are are what we need to force a change, and it seems that they are, my guess is that the sooner we get to them, the sooner we can heal this increasingly hot earth.

    Anyway, thank you again, I truly appreciate your great work!

    Reply

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