Ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever:' 3 Climate records broken in 2024

The statement
"The obstacles are not physical. They're not technological — they're entirely political at this point."
misses the point entirely.

The reason that there is political opposition is because of the effects of the "solutions" on the lives of people - too many do not agree to accept those effects. So, the technology that is being proposed is not adequate to achieve the changes it is intended to achieve.

The costs and the decisions of who will bear them and who will benefit from them are a big part of the problem.

At this point, China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but is being allowed to increase those emissions because it is classified as "developing" rather than "developed". And, the U. S. and Europe are being called upon to provide a trillion $, not "just" 300 billion $, to "help" "developing" nations (other than China). Even China sees the ridiculousness of the designations, and is voluntarily doing a bit more. because of the political backlash.

But, pouring money into governments of "developing" countries, many of which are terribly corrupt, is not really expected to create the changes needed, anyway. Unless the "developed" nations actually build the infrastructures in the "developing" countries, we cannot expect to achieve "climate success". And, even trying to do that is likely to get mired in corruption.

Meanwhile, the "politics" in the "developed" countries is unlikely to sustain a trillion $ give away while the quality of life in the "developed" countries declines, especially if there is a simultaneous improvement in the quality of life in the countries getting "assistance".

I still think the bottom line is that there are just too many people on the planet for us to all achieve the quality of life that is currently (or at least recently) being enjoyed by most of North America and Europe. With much of the world's population scrambling to achieve the same levels of comfort, there is a huge demand for more greenhouse gas emitting activities that is still going to overwhelm the minority trying to reduce them.

So, unless there is a better "technology" that can do both, and do it rapidly, we are not going to meet the "climate change" objectives.

Perhaps geothermal energy from deep bore holes is that technological breakthrough that we really need. I agree we should be pouring research $ into that. But, we seem to be pouring a lot of money into "fusion power" that does not seem to me to be a realistic hope for a quick transformation of our energy infrastructure.
 
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I have theories of space smoke that can be used to blanket the earth. But with added particles you probably get more temperature. Unless used to create drafts.

I have theorized that the chemistry of the sun is pushing out matter at a fast rate. This includes smoke particles.

If we could find currents of this theoretical frozen tiny beyond microscopic smoke then perhaps we could introduce it to our atmosphere using plenty of EMFs or a giant bomb could actually be put to good use.

The bomb in the current of smoke would increase all heated particles and make more enter the atmosphere. I theorize it will increase global warming but you could raise water levels from byproducts of the sun.
 
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I don't know who said that crisis management should not bring financial profit. But it is a fact and the profits are huge. Because of this, there is also a constant organization of crises, they are constantly advertised and through their "management" from the national budgets to which we all contribute, huge money is moved into the personal accounts of the organizers and accomplices in the crises, billionaires, politicians, scientists, media owners. Climate warming is natural process. Humanity is not able to influence it with good control*. To manage the climate of an entire planet, progress on the Kardashev scale is required, which we may reach in 100 years, or we may need more time.

*Good control requires very high-quality and extensive knowledge of climate processes and much more reliable and accurate climate mathematics. We cannot make a 100% accurate regional forecast even a day ahead, despite all the means of observation, including from space, despite all the accumulated experience and the provided computing power.
 
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As much as we don’t think a single grain of sand is much. We would have no beaches with 0. I’ve heard rumors of rain machines and I’ve also read hydrogen bombs create rain.

Nuclear radiation set aside. We know these booms make rain. So could we place a non radioactive bomb strategically to make it rain from space where much radioactive active particles already exist.

I know it’s crazy but I’d agree we might see weather technology develop in the next 100 years.
 
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When has anyone explained who studied the potentially hundreds, no thousands, of possible causes for Earth’s climate to change? Who has ever explained how their scientific evaluation had concluded that of those, human activity is the only culprit. NOAA once stated on their website (decades ago) that in Earth’s carbon cycle between air/ atmosphere/ ocean and rock, that human activity accounts for about 4% of carbon entering the atmosphere. But they confidently stated that was enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into a steady centuries long rise in CO2. Who concludes that and how? Why during the COVID shutdown didn’t atmospheric CO2 decline? I don’t understand the lack of skepticism. That is a foundation of science: ask questions, and defend your conclusions. If you can.
 

COLGeek

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When has anyone explained who studied the potentially hundreds, no thousands, of possible causes for Earth’s climate to change? Who has ever explained how their scientific evaluation had concluded that of those, human activity is the only culprit. NOAA once stated on their website (decades ago) that in Earth’s carbon cycle between air/ atmosphere/ ocean and rock, that human activity accounts for about 4% of carbon entering the atmosphere. But they confidently stated that was enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into a steady centuries long rise in CO2. Who concludes that and how? Why during the COVID shutdown didn’t atmospheric CO2 decline? I don’t understand the lack of skepticism. That is a foundation of science: ask questions, and defend your conclusions. If you can.
Take a look here.

 

COLGeek

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COLGeek, Is that the link you intended? It addresses NO2, SO2, CO, and PM pollutants, but not CO2. It is more related to human health than climate effects.
I did mean that one. Just one of several studies/sources documenting overall impacts. While CO2 gets a lot of attention, it isn't the only thing humans dump into the atmosphere.

A simple search, for those actually interested in a balanced view, will find multiple sources regarding improved air quality during COVID (and ever farther back to 9/11 that looked at impacts of nearly no air travel for a while).

Facts/science and political opinions/rhetoric obviously don't agree. That is truly sad.

Last, no amount of fact finding will convince some. So, I don't feel it necessary to provide exhaustive responses. If someone gets interested enough in a topic AND wants to learn more, they can do so easily.

Happy New Year. This year starting rough already.
 
But HobartStinsonian's post was about accounting for CO2 changing the climate with greenhouse effects, and he merely mentioned that the COVID shutdowns as possible changes in the CO2 emission rate that should be investigated along with many other sources and sinks for atmospheric carbon.

The atmospheric temperatures do not respond rapidly to changes in human CO2 emissions for 2 reasons. One is that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is pretty long, so the net effect of a particular emission episode lasts for a long time and is cumulative. The other reason is that there is already a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than we emit in a year. At 422.17 ppm atmospheric concentration, that is about 3300 gigatons of CO2 currently in the air. ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere ) Estimated human emissions in 2023 were 37.4 Gigatons of CO2. (See https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emi...-2023-but-clean-energy-is-limiting-the-growth ). But, CO2 is also coming from other sources and being removed from the atmosphere by other processes, including absorption by the oceans and photosynthesis on land.

So, the real question in HobartStinsonian's post is related to the dynamic balance of the total set of in and out processes, both human caused and natural. He is asking if that has been modeled correctly.

My guess is probably not, but probably well enough to demonstrate that humans are having some effect. I don't think we have enough modeling capability to show what the natural CO2 shifts would be without humans. We do see shifts during previous interglacial periods, but their timing is not perfectly clear, and sometimes it looks like the CO2 causes warming and sometimes it looks like the warming caused increased CO2. Actually, I think that both are working at the same time, and there is a shifting balance in the net result that is hard to model in enough detail with current tools and data.

I think it is clear that human emissions of CO2 (and methane) does contribute to creating a net warming effect. But, I don't think it is clear that we would not be seeing any warming or any increases in atmospheric CO2 at this point if humans were not emitting any.
 
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COLGeek

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True, a post was made regarding CO2. Your points are solid as well. This is not an "either/or" issue and that is often what gets lost when discussing human impact on the climate as you noted.
 
When has anyone explained who studied the potentially hundreds, no thousands, of possible causes for Earth’s climate to change? Who has ever explained how their scientific evaluation had concluded that of those, human activity is the only culprit. NOAA once stated on their website (decades ago) that in Earth’s carbon cycle between air/ atmosphere/ ocean and rock, that human activity accounts for about 4% of carbon entering the atmosphere. But they confidently stated that was enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into a steady centuries long rise in CO2. Who concludes that and how? Why during the COVID shutdown didn’t atmospheric CO2 decline? I don’t understand the lack of skepticism. That is a foundation of science: ask questions, and defend your conclusions. If you can.
Every conceivable cause has been considered and measured and estimated - and there are not hundred or thousands of them. The big ones not only are well understood, they are consistent with what is happening.

You appear to see how much CO2 human activities make compared to natural yet you don't consider what really counts - the difference between ALL sources and ALL sinks. You don't appear to consider the processes - natural processes - that take CO2 out of the atmosphere, at all. Like they don't even exist! Wow.

Climate scientists have. And you are accusing climate scientists of not considering things of vital importance, of fundamental incompetence! (This is like looking at a swimming pool with a hose trickling into it and seeing how much bigger the biggest source of water going into the pool - the filter return pipe. But not noticing the water drawn out of the pool by the filter pump , the reason why the filter return doesn't make the water level change but a trickling hose (tiny in comparison) does. With this level of ignorance, basic misunderstanding and hubris (you imagine you know better than the scientists) being so commonplace - and widely encouraged - it is no surprise that facing up to the problem head on and fixing it is so difficult.

Natural sinks - oceans and vegetation - are taking more CO2 out the atmosphere than all the natural sources add plus (so far) about 1/3 of the extra from human sources (but leaving 2/3 to accumulate) - or global warming would be a lot worse than it is already.

iu
 
Ken,

I think you have the big picture roughly correct.

But, most of the rates for CO2 ins and outs are estimates based on some measurements and some assumptions. We don't currently have direct measurements for the total quantities for a lot of the processes, so we use modeling and adjust things so that the net result is the same in the model as in the actual air for global average CO2 concentrations. So, there could be compensating errors in the modeling. The uncertainties in the models are mostly ignored by activists who are using results to support political agendas.

However, with new satellites, we are finally beginning to get some more comprehensive data on localized concentration variations, which can more easily be attributed to specific point and area sources and sinks.

So, the picture is being made clearer, and largely by space-based sensing.

But, forecasting the future is still not well in hand. Even though the UN has narrowed the predictions of temperature as a function of time, there is still a pretty wide range for even specific emissions scenarios. And, we do recognize that there is some non-linearity in the climatic responses, particularly in the initiation of the glaciation and thaw cycles.

With the current predictions that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation will soon shut down, and the predictions that will cause substantial cooling in the North Atlantic land areas, we are predicting changes, but not necessarily in the same direction as "warming". Knowing that the atmosphere has changed dozens of times from glaciation to thaw and back again over the last 3 million years, and not knowing that the details of how that occurs, we are still on somewhat shaky ground predicting the future out to a few thousand years from now, maybe even a few decades from now.

But, we do know that we are doing things that affect the parameters that are involved in the cycles. So, there is some rationale to minimize our impacts when we see them pushing the cycle in a direction that will cause us problems.

On the other hand, even the unperturbed cycle will cause us problems. Drastic cooling of the Northern Hemisphere, combined with decreasing sea levels, would cause us a lot of health and wealth problems, too. And that has occurred many times in the past 3 million years, apparently without any significant contributions from human activities.

Geological evidence shows us that the climate that we have enjoyed for the last few thousand years has not only been unusually stable, but that it has been in a condition that is representative of the unperturbed system for only about 10% of the time,

So, clearly, we need to be expecting this climate to change. We do not yet understand the system well enough to control it so that it will never change again. In fact, we don't yet really know if we have disrupted the cooling part of the cycle so that there will not be any more glaciation events. But, if we have, that might actually be to our benefit, overall - provided we don't send the climate into some sort of inferno.

But, with geological evidence telling us that the CO2 concentration has been as high as 1600 ppm tens of millions of years ago, and the temperatures being as high as 14 degrees C higher than now, it seems pretty clear that the Earth's climate is not headed for conditions like on Venus soon, with our current CO2 levels being around 400 ppm. (see https://d26toa8f6ahusa.cloudfront.n.../Atmosphere-CO2-warmingStripes68-1536x742.jpg )

The biggest concern is that extremely rapid climate changes can stress species to extinction. And, this has happened naturally many times, apparently including to some species of human ancestors and their cousins, sometimes from cold instead of heat.

And, we are already causing mass extinctions by other means, mainly habitat loss, but also food hunting.

If we were still a sparse, roaming, hunter-gatherer species that could follow the desired climate conditions as they shift about, we would have less trouble adapting than our current situation allows, where groups are holding and fiercely defending specific areas against encroachments by other humans.

So, we are going to have to mostly adapt in place. We do have technology that no species before us has had. But, there is a question whether we can use it to our long-term advantage with the same degree of success as we have managed to use it for our short term advantage, with unexpected long term undesirable consequences.
 
Unclear Engineer - Is it unreasonable for people to take the science based expert advice at face value and, in the face of deep institutional resistance to facing up to it, become politically activist about it? We aren't considering the possibility that the science could be wrong and maybe everything will be fine? Maybe it will save us from the next interglacial in a few thousand years time? I see risk assessment as about the potential for worst cases as well as about the most likely cases and think we should act as if the worst case possibilities are real possibilities. That is not an unreasonable bias. I am not going to apologise for that. What happens in the time of people now living - the next century - matters more to me than far future ice sheets. The changes from what conditions were like a century ago matter much more to me than conditions millions of years ago. We had a period of exceptional climate stability and that stability no longer exists. I think the extent of the changes to climate matter, that the ideal climate is not any particular global temperature but is climate that is not rapidly changing. That is not the same as deciding what the climate should be. No-one - certainly not me - is claiming we have any fine control. We do have the capability to greatly reduce the largest climate disrupting influence - excess ghg emissions.

Apart from the worst case possibilities, that have lower probability the IPCC advice is that the most likely ones are extremely serious in their own right. The disruption of global climate stability looks like a very serious thing to me - not because of what activist orgs say but because of what the top level science based advice says about it. Yes there are error bars and uncertainties but "all will be well" is looking like an unlikely, very low probability outcome, especially in the face of people arguing we should not be concerned, who argue that doing less than science advice at face value indicates is appropriate, and inaction is somehow a wise and sensible "compromise". Such people still hold some of the most powerful Offices in the world.

Not really clear what your point is about potential for counter-intuitive outcomes like extreme cold for parts of the world from ocean current disruption. I see it as reason to push harder with emissions reductions as a higher priority. It isn't like this possibility is only now getting mentioned. My understanding is elsewhere than Europe/N. America is likely to experience more extreme warming and disruption of existing climate conditions under an AMOC shutdown, ie including where most of the world's population is. Including me and people I know.

Getting activist about it is an appropriate and logical response, a consequence of failures of law and governance. Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking has successfully made their climate "policies" about opposing and obstructing climate activism but it is people holding the highest Offices where the duty of care lies and where the failures to act appropriately are happening. It is also where the greatest resources, of science and analysis and expertise to develop appropriate policies are. I don't expect Greenpeace to have the answers; it is the absence of mainstream policy (you care so much, you fix it) that makes it about them.
 
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Ken,

First of all, I think we agree that it is not wise to think that "everything will be OK".

My main point is that we are not really sure what climate will be in the future, and maybe even on a shorter time period than you are thinking. The AMOC shutdown is not such a long-term consideration at this point - it is a within our lifetime type issue for most people alive today.

And, sudden cooling is an issue of some serious proportions, too. For example read this link about searching for the volcano eruption that had serious planet-wide effects in the 1830s time period. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/science/mystery-volcano-1831-eruption-simushir/index.html .

I do agree with you that sudden changes are the most dangerous for us as a species - and for most species, too. But, sudden changes have occurred and will probably continue to occur on Earth.

So, my main point is that we need to get past the idea that we are going to be able to keep living in a climate that is as stable as we have enjoyed for the last few thousand years. The science tells us that is an unwarranted expectation.

But, the politics is still trying to make people fear change and tell us to do what they say to "stop sea level rise", etc. etc. The science is pretty clear that we are not going to stop sea level rise at any point in the near future that will prevent things like the Marshall Islands and our harbor cities from getting inundated.

What I am advocating is that we need to be realistic about what is happening, how unpreventable the short-term consequences already are, and how uncertain our medium term predictions really are.

At the same time, we can talk about how disruptive humans are to the natural ecosystem, not just by climate change, but by habitat destruction, biological resource over-harvesting, chemical pollution, etc. etc.

But, in the end, we do not have the power to just force people to do what we think they should do "for the good of humanity" or "for the good of the Earth". We need to convince them to do things that are less disruptive. And politicians who try to claim that their solutions are "the way" to continue along as we are currently headed are just setting up the basis for disbelief of them and the science they claim in "on their side" when the promises are not coming true.

Try telling your neighbors that they will be required to have solar power on their roofs, eat only vegan diets, and drive only electric cars, with only one per family, and that their taxes will need to go up by a large factor to make that happen for everybody on the planet, not to expect that they will get government subsidies themselves if the government decides they don't really need them. And, when they protest, remind them that most people on the planet don't even live up to that standard, but would like to. So, we "rich people" need to pay what it takes to get them up to that standard.

Those are the "solutions" we seem to be able to technologically support now (no future technological "breakthroughs"), and they are not selling to the "rich" people who would need to not only adopt them for themselves, but also subsidize them for the rest of 8 to 10 billion people.

So, we have a political problem, and politicians lying about it is not making it any better. The lies about the uncertainty of the science are only a small part of the issue. We also need clarity on the inevitability of change and the sacrifices in life styles that are going to be demanded.
 
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Yes is enough Yellowstone super eruption with scale of eruption of Toba and the survivors will have tremendous cooling effect for at least few years.
Yes. Volcanoes can produce short term cooling, thanks in part to SO2. Ancient periods of vulcanism, however, seem to cause warming effects due to CO2, most likely.

The Tonga explosion in 2022 was different. It launched so much water into the stratosphere (~ 60,000 Olympic swimming pools in quantity, IIRC) that scientists varied in their predictions.

The higher than expected temperatures for 2023 are hard to attribute to the slight CO2 increase, El Nino effects, or reduced sulfur emissions.

It is inconclusive that Tonga is responsible, but it is a favorable candidate. [More here.]

More science and data, with improved modeling, will make a difference.
 
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~ 60,000 Olympic swimming pools...
Yes the data varies. Although this eruption happened very recently and was tracked with so many modern means of observation and recording. What can we say about data from the past, when all these means were missing. Science at the edge of possibilities deals with an extraordinary number of assumptions. I have already shared that there is not even a regional weather forecast for just a day ahead that is 100% accurate, and some are trying to create scenarios for dozens of years and a century ahead. In order to scare the population and justify the several hundred billion euros that EU politicians stole from the budget supposedly to combat global warming for the period until 2030. The part of this money is spending for advertising of global warming, with other words for alarmism. People trust scientists, and that's why the alarmism about global warming caused by human activity, spoken by scientists, seems the most credible. Scientists have so much different data at their disposal. It's not difficult to select and publicly show out those that are convenient.
 

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