This year will be the hottest recorded year. It used to be that the average world temperature was 0.7 degree C or 1.36 degree F above pre-industrial times. This year may be 1.0 degree C or 1.8 degree F above pre-industrial times.
The NOAA published in the professional and reviewed Science Magazine that more temperature data with advanced adjustment show that the world’s temperature rise has continued without pause. Skeptics like to take the El Nino year of 1998, with an enormous temperature jump, as a new starting point to show that the temperature was no longer increasing. But in 1999, the temperature returned to normal, and has really been increasing since then. We have pointed this out in this blog.
The pledges of the Paris Conference of 2015 show that the turnover in the worldwide rate of emissions will not turn over until 2030. But emissions will still continue at the highest rate ever. While we are waiting for the rate to drop afterwards, the 2 degree C,or 3.6 degree F warming, may be reached as early as 2032. The 2 degree C level has been considered by Europe as that at which many serious climate effect will cause effects beyond the tolerable level. Clearly, as newer and cleaner power sources come on line, there will still be more warming until the rate of CO2 emissions decline to almost zero.
But Wait! There’s More! Not only do we get the additional warming of the peak rate of CO2 emissions, the CO2 emissions of the last one hundred years are still partly up there, with a lifetime of the order of a hundred years to be absorbed in the ocean, trees, or land. Even if all CO2 emissions ceased in 2030, the effects of lingering CO2 causing warming will continue for the order of a hundred years.
Clearly, this Paris talks, as well as the next International talks of 2020 have to adopt more responsive decreases in CO2 emissions. In the United States, we have to stop backing politicians who are funded by the fossil fuel industry, and who promise to continue to destroy an international agreement, and the goals of the US in decreasing CO2 emissions. We have to stop backing politicians who continue to be climate change deniers and media who are sowers of doubt, when the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists supports the conclusions that are agreed upon worldwide. We have to stop such politicians from cutting climate science funding that will be crucial to effective and economical adaptation to climate change. We have to continue and increase funding for research and development of clean energy sources, and methods of increased energy conservation and efficiency. We also have to devote part of our efforts to methods that apply to underdeveloped countries, as well.
