Global Warming Is Still Accelerating, in Three Graphs
How much of the current economy would you sacrifice to prevent the future economy from complete collapse?
This is your regular reminder that no one of consequence is doing anything about the issue of most consequence. Consider the three graphs presented here.
Global Temperature Rise
The first (above) shows year-by-year global temperatures since 1941 (source here). The black line shows the trend line for the entire chart. Does that look like acceleration to you?
Atlantic Ocean Sea Surface Temperature
Now consider the chart below (source here). It shows surface temperature in the Atlantic Ocean from January 1940 through February 2024.
If the segment from 2020 to now (circled in blue on the far right) doesn’t look like acceleration, your optician may need to check your prescription.
Total Energy Imbalance
Here's related data. It shows the overall "energy imbalance" — energy in minus energy out — averaged over the whole of the planet. (The source is here.)
The timeline (x-axis) for this chart is restricted to just the last ten years. The area under the top yellow line shows “Absorbed Solar Radiation” (energy in). The area under the lower red line shows “Outgoing Radiation” (energy out).
The difference, the area between the two lines in pure yellow, is net radiation, energy in less energy out, in this case heat retained by the planet.
Starting around 2014, energy in, the yellow line, starts climbing, while around 2017, outgoing radiation, the red line, flattens. The result is an increase in energy retained. This is clear from the chart. Note that the yellow area noticeably increases, grows fatter.
In 2004, energy retained across the entire planetary surface averaged +0.4 W/m2 (Watts per square meter). Just 10 years later, energy retained rose to +1.4 W/m2, a three-fold increase. New heat is being added at an accelerating rate.
Post-Climate GNP
World GNP — the economic sum of global economic activity — topped $100 trillion in 2022.
What will be the sum of global economic activity after the population is reduced to a tenth or less and almost everyone is tribal and pre-agricultural? Zero, perhaps?
So, how much of the current economy would you sacrifice to prevent the future economy from complete collapse?
The answer, if one is a cynic, may depend on whether the “you” answering this question thinks the collapse will come during that person’s lifetime or after it.
The conventional wisdom is that the global climate crisis will come later this century. Is this why no one of consequence is doing anything about the issue of most consequence? Because the crisis will be someone else’s problem?
If this is what they think, why keep them in charge?
Replying to Ian:
The first sentence in his final quote is true:
> “One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”
It’s clearly true that climate mitigation policy is also economic policy — which is why climate policy is so frightening to the world’s already-rich….
And why that group so assiduously campaigns against any climate mitigation that touches their wealth…
Which is also why the world has no practical climate mitigation policy at all.
Thoughts?
Thomas
Our species has existed in a stable climate that enabled habitation of much of the earth's land mass. But major systems, chiefly ocean and atmospheric currents that help maintain temperature stasis are starting to weaken and potentially disappear.
So climate scenarios that used to be improbable may not be absolutely unlikely in the future. Imagine a year long rain storm. Or how about a decade long heat dome with insufferable humidity that borders on the wet bulb temperature limit for our species' existence.
A different set of climate scenarios are locked in for us.
What is lacking is our lack of imagination. Our life revolves around material accumulation and doing bullshit work for billionaires. To reform this worldview will require time that frankly might not be allotted to us. To me, a simple start is to live locally. Support local producers of good and services. That will be a tough challenge!
There will be virulent opposition to every word I wrote here. But let this contest become the politics of our coming years.