Too late to save the climate?

Whether anything can be done by humans to arrest or reverse global warming and its consequences for the habitability of planet Earth remains an open question, for which neither climate science nor the ignorant hordes of politicians and economists, oblivious to the basic laws of physics, have the answer. However, it is likely that over the next centuries or longer the flow of cold water from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets will slow down the mean rate of warming.

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An projection by NOAA states: “While we cannot stop global warming overnight, heat-trapping gases and soot (“black carbon”). This projection takes neither the amplifying feedback, i.e. from warming oceans, melting ice sheets, migrating climate zones and melting of methane, nor the time factor into account.

A summary analysis of the principal factors relevant to this question follows:

Having ignored climate science, dismissed climate scientists and repeatedly confected lies while global heating accelerates with deleterious consequences, Homo “sapiens” is finding itself on track toward carbon poisoning of the atmosphere, the lungs of the inhabitable Earth, acidification of the hydrosphere and coating of the land with carbon and plastics.

In a new paper, a group of leading climate scientists (Hansen et al., 2023) indicates mean global temperature is currently accelerating toward 2.0°C above pre-industrial temperature by the middle of the decade (Figure 1). The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the last 43 years, on average around 3℃ warmer than it was in 1980. Over the past 30 years Antarctica has been one of the fastest-changing places on Earth, warming more than 3 times than the rest of the world.




Thus (Figure 2.):

• Agro-climate zones in eastern Europe experienced a northward migration velocity of 100 km per 10 years over the past 40 years.
• Northward migration of climate zones in Europe may be up to two times faster in the next decades.
• Negative impacts of heat stress are expected to non-linearly increase in large parts of southern and southeastern Europe.

A projection by NOAA states: “While we cannot stop global warming overnight, we can slow the rate and limit the amount of global warming by reducing human emissions of heat-trapping gases and soot (“black carbon”). This projection takes neither the amplifying feedback, i.e. from warming of the oceans, melting ice sheets, melting of the permafrost, migrating climate zones, nor the time factor into account.

Factors rendering a potential reversal of global warming unlikely include:

[ Figure 4. Surface air temperature (◦C) relative to 1880–1920 in (a) 2065, (b) 2080, and (c) 2096. Top row is IPCC scenario A1B. Ice melt with 10-year doubling is added in other scenarios - James Hansen et al. 2016. ]

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist