> "hothouse" temperatures could stabilize 4°C to 5°C (39 to 41 Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial levels.<p>A change of 4-5°C is a change of 7-9 degrees Fahrenheit, not 39-41.
I'm absolutely certain with governments moving this slow right now, making small goals for 2050, getting courted by lobbies to not push through massive restrictions, probably most of these very dark predictions will come true. I, as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our society, overruling politicians or outright controlling them directly. We are probably beyond any point of return. The people that yearn for the next payday will get their money and probably will be able to save themselves in an underground bunker or a suite in the mountains, while the rest of the poor and middle class burn in the ashes they leave behind.
We all know by now CO2 and CH4 leads to a warmer planet. We also know what's driving greenhouse gas levels to rise across Earth. Contributors are deforestation, intensive animal farming, and primarily the combustion of carbon fossil fuels like coal, tar sands, oil, natural gas etc. But here is the underlying problem, despite us knowing how bad things are, (97+% of scientists who study this field agree we are causing the planet's climate to shift away from the temperate climate we thrived in) not enough is being done at present to truly solve the problem.
What really is disheartening and what no one in the media and government is talking about is how in 2015 CO2 levels rose by the largest amount in human recorded history. 3.05 PPM
<a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html</a>
We are being lied to and mislead by our governments that uniform actions are being performed to save the planet for the future of man. Vested interests in the fossil fuel industry continue to drive climate change. Yes, solar energy is starting to become incredibly efficient but not enough of it is coming online in proportion to fossil fuel burning that persists and is also installed annually. If we do not rally against it, our ability to live on this planet is at stake. The lives of our posterity are also at risk because of the burning. It will not be until we take extreme actions not on a country level but as humanity together that we will slow the burning and save ourselves.
What are these actions you might ask that will actually be effective? These can range from banning fossil fuels entirely, global carbon pricing system, banning deforestation, changing human diets, extreme uniform investment in renewable energy and potentially fourth generation nuclear reactors, more funding for developing nations to install alternative energy sources, and to shift the transportation grid towards sustainability.
I really wish the more popular phrase were "global climate change" rather than "global warming." The delta in the mean might not appear to be huge (a few degrees C over a span of a century or two, perhaps), but the key concept is the <i>variance</i> or volatility of climate patterns.<p>As man-made climate change progresses, the average recorded temperature will likely continue to climb, sure--but the change in variance is far more significant in terms of the extreme events that will occur with increasing regularity.
I'm worried that this could be just 'the tip of the iceberg' [1]. I have a suspicion that even J. Hansen is still underestimating the issue. Just looking at [2] the variability of current estimates of stored methane is enormous - going from 10E2 to 5x10E4 Gigatonnes! Methane does greenhouse forcing 20-25x as strong as CO2 over 100 years, or as much as ~160x if you only count 10 years. Depending on how fast methane gets released this really matters - if the released methane triggers more methane to come out through warming we may be in big trouble, even without burning all coal, oil and gas reserves currently known.<p>Further reading concerning methane: [3], [4].<p>Reason why dismissing this using PETM boundary is probably invalid: There was with high certainty less methane around since PETM didn't immediately follow a cold high-storage period, solar energy was also weaker, and most importantly, PETM was caused by methane alone, not a combination of fossil fuel burning <i>in addition to</i> methane [5].<p>Just to clarify: If we get the effects of PETM alone, this means around +8C global average <i>on top</i> of what we're doing. But from what I'm reading, PETM effects are not the whole story as pointed out above. Not that it really matters, +10-12C global average is almost certainly a global killer alone (except bacteria), it's just that I don't think it would stabilise there, it would go on to pressure cook earth's surface until absolutely nothing is left.<p>This stuff has me worried by far the most, especially for my now 2yo son.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.kairoscanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/PBP29-ArcticIce.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.kairoscanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/PBP2...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://oceanrep.geomar.de/30683/1/GasHydrates_Vol1_screen.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://oceanrep.geomar.de/30683/1/GasHydrates_Vol1_screen.pd...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021830136X" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021...</a><p>[4] <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1246" rel="nofollow">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1246</a><p>[5] <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exaggerations.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exagger...</a>
I have been hearing this since the mid 1980s.<p>I wouldn't have heard of it before, because before then scientists were telling us that the climate was going to get a lot cooler...
I don't know, I've seen what temperatures have been in the past decade in Europe and I can tell that it doesn't get any hotter, in fact, it could be getting colder. Can anyone show some statistics supporting the global warming?<p>Edit:
I know how to google myself but I am asking people to get a little more involved and not lay out facts out of memory. I thought I could make a good discussion on the topic but kept getting hostility for some reason.