A new study released today by the Global Carbon Project forecasts that global annual carbon emissions will increase by an expected 2.7% in 2018, with a range between 1.8% and 3.7%. 2018 will be the second consecutive year of global carbon emissions increases following a flat trend between 2014 and 2016.
Globally, fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions are expected to reach 37.1 billion metric tons in 2018, a new record.
In order of emissions contributions, the 10 highest carbon emitters in 2018 are China, the U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Canada.
Carbon emissions from coal combustion have increased in 2018, reversing a previously decreasing trend. Emissions from oil and gas combustion have continued to rise unabated for years.
Energy use from renewable sources is on the rise, and per capita carbon emissions are falling in many parts of the world. However, these efforts have not yet been sufficient to cause global carbon emissions to peak or begin declining.
According to a recently released report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in order to meet the Paris climate agreement goals of holding global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C above the pre-industrial average temperature, global yearly carbon dioxide emissions from all sources, including fossil fuel combustion, will need to peak by 2020, decline to 50% of the peak value by around 2030, and reach net zero emissions no later than around 2055, as shown in the lower left panel below.
“I don’t believe it.”
–President Donald Trump, when asked on the White House lawn yesterday for his thoughts on the new climate report prepared by over 300 climate scientists and policy experts spread across 13 departments and agencies of his own administration and citing thousands of peer-reviewed scientific findings
“You’re going to have to have China and Japan and all of Asia and all these other countries, you know, it addresses our country … But if we’re clean, but every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.”
–President Donald Trump, further expanding on his thoughts to say (I think) that if he did believe the report produced by his own government (which he doesn’t), he would point his finger at other countries, for example China, Japan, and a bunch of other countries in Asia he can’t remember the names of (which, unlike the United States, have not announced their intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, an agreement that seeks to bind all nations in a cooperative effort to mitigate climate change)
“…the continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts.”
–New climate report, Summary Findings, 2. Economy
“While mitigation and adaptation efforts have expanded substantially in the last four years, they do not yet approach the scale considered necessary to avoid substantial damages to the economy, environment, and human health over the coming decades … Future risks from climate change depend primarily on decisions made today.”
–New climate report, Summary Findings, 4. Actions to Reduce Risks
“Ecosystems and the benefits they provide to society are being altered by climate change, and these impacts are projected to continue. Without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, transformative impacts on some ecosystems will occur; some coral reef and sea ice ecosystems are already experiencing such transformational changes … without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, extinctions and transformative impacts on some ecosystems cannot be avoided in the long term.”
–New climate report, Summary Findings, 8. Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services
“Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands, and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the United States. Expected increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality, and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad threaten rural livelihoods, sustainable food security, and price stability.”
–New climate report, Summary Findings, 9. Agriculture
“Lasting damage to coastal property and infrastructure driven by sea level rise and storm surge is expected to lead to financial losses for individuals, businesses, and communities…”
–New climate report, Summary Findings, 11. Oceans & Coasts
“Impacts from climate change on extreme weather and climate-related events, air quality, and the transmission of disease through insects and pests, food, and water increasingly threaten the health and well-being of the American people…”
–New climate report, Summary Findings, 6. Health
“In the absence of more significant global mitigation efforts, climate change is projected to impose substantial damages on the U.S. economy, human health, and the environment … It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.”
–New climate report, Report-In-Brief, Key Message 2: The Risks of Inaction
The President’s refusal to “believe” this report, the consensus conclusions of the best experts in his own government;
his determination to continue pursuing policies that worsen the problem and, in the pursuit of ephemeral profits primarily for a tiny minority of fossil fuel executives and shareholders, put us on a course to permanently and irreversibly harm the world’s ability to support our children and future generations
The Act established the USGCRP, a program with 13 contributing federal agencies and departments, and provided that the program shall produce a comprehensive national assessment report to policymakers every 4 years. The new report is the second part of the fourth resulting National Climate Assessment, focusing on impacts, risks, mitigation and adaptation options for the nation. The first part, focusing on the underlying physical science of climate change, was published last year.
Following are the federal agencies and departments that contributed to the report:
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which administratively coordinated the report
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI)
U.S. State Department (DOS)
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Smithsonian Institution
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Why was the report released on Black Friday?
Weird story here. The report was initially scheduled to be released between Dec. 10th and 14th during a large scientific conference in Washington, D.C. Instead, officials announced early last week that the report would be released on the afternoon of Black Friday. In a press conference, NOAA officials declined to provide an explanation, saying only, “It’s out earlier than expected … This report has not been altered or revised in any way to reflect political considerations.”
Hence, rescuethatfrog.com, which views climate change as a huge priority, has devised the clever strategy of resurrecting the news story on Monday. Cyber Monday even, when perhaps many eyes will be online? Hope it works.
Please help it work by sharing this information with your friends and family!
If there’s one most important takeaway from this report, it’s this. The main conclusions and forecasts are essentially the same as the previous 2014 National Climate Assessment, but with the significant addition that climate change effects are readily observable and affecting American lives now. The wildfires in California and flooding events on American coasts are directly attributed to climate change. Far from being a boon to the U.S. economy, the report does not mince words in tracing a direct line from continued fossil fuel use to substantial and intensifying future harms to the U.S. economy, in diverse sectors from farms to fishing to real estate to health care to tourism, starting right now.
“It shows us that climate change is not a distant issue. It’s not about plants, or animals, or a future generation. It’s about us, living now … It’s not that we care about a 1-degree increase in global temperature in the abstract … We care about water, we care about food, we care about the economy—and every single one of those things is being affected by climate change today.”
Even if a person were to distrust the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings on climate change, it would seem this report would carry some weight. After all, it represents the consensus findings of hundreds of experts within our own government — people literally tasked with putting “America First.” So, what’s weird is the transparent incongruity between the conclusions of a broad swath of the U.S. government, as represented in this report, and the attitudes of the President, who frequently advocates for “America First,” and many of our other elected representatives.
Case in point:
Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?
-President Donald Trump, ignorantly confusing weather and climate on Twitter just last Wednesday. Deep thought: Is the president really that ignorant? — hard to believe since he has the opportunity of being advised by hundreds of experts in his own government on the outrageous idiocy of this tweet. Or, does he know better but calculate that he can nevertheless score political points with this tweet because WE are that ignorant?
Counter-point:
“If the United States were to try and achieve the targets in the Paris Agreement, then things will be bad, but we can manage … But if we don’t meet them, then we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives every year that are at risk because of climate change. And hundreds of billions of dollars.”
CNN — Planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, experts warn
New York Post (later republished by Fox News) — Terrifying climate change warning: 12 years until we’re doomed
Popular Science — What you should know about the new climate change report
Motherboard — We’re ‘nowhere near on track’ to meeting our climate change goals, UN report says
The Economist — Why the IPCC’s report on global warming matters
I’ve spent some time reading the report, which is publicly available here, and this post is to share some of the key takeaways using 4 of the key IPCC graphs.
Though the articles above are largely factually correct, I disagree with the tone of some of them. In particular, I hate the title, “Terrifying climate change warning: 12 years until we’re doomed.” Believing we’re “doomed” is just as paralyzing and irresponsible as denying climate change. It has the effect of externalizing the problem, making it seem like an act of nature or something that’s being done to us. In fact, we are only “doomed” to the extent that we allow ourselves to be.
And, let’s be very clear: insofar as “doomed” means “dispossessed of homes, livelihoods, liberty, and cultural identity by the effects of climate change,” people (including Americans) are already being doomed this very moment. Just read my posts on Shishmaref, Kiribati, Fiji, or indeed Miami. Or, watch the news about the latest hurricane landfall and imagine a future in which those hurricanes intensify decade upon decade. Or take a trip to the Western U.S. during the summer. Or, read about the African “Road of Fire” populated by migrant people fleeing drought, water shortage, crop failures, and resulting violence in their former homes.
The point of the IPCC reports is to rationally describe the challenge and to forecast risks as a result of various policies we might pursue, over which we have control, with the ultimate purpose of defining policies to limit the damage and reduce the future risks.
Who wrote it. There is evidently some question about this among some folks.
“It was given to me. It was given to me, and I want to look at who drew, you know, which group drew it. Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren’t so good.”
It’s actually not a “drawing” per se, but it does contain many informative graphical renderings, two of which we will look at in this post.
In less than 10 minutes of dedicated Googling, I was able to ascertain with a great deal of clarity “who drew” the IPCC Special Report. The report was written by 91 scientists and government agents. Of those lead authors, the greatest number (7) were Americans; the other 84 were from 43 other countries. The lead authors synthesized contributions from 133 contributing authors who drew scientific data and conclusions from over 6,000 cited references in the scientific literature, primarily peer reviewed scientific studies. Drafts of the report were reviewed by some 2,000 registered expert reviewers from 124 countries who generated 42,001 expert review comments that were considered during production of the final report.
To be absolutely clear, there is no “opposing scientific view” on climate change with anything even minutely approaching the credibility of the above detailed effort. The IPCC reports represent, quite literally, the best human understanding of climate change, its predicted consequences, and possibilities for its mitigation.
Why they wrote it. At the time the Paris Agreement was adopted in December, 2015, the 195 nations signing the agreement committed to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” The latter goal was advocated for by the Pacific island nations, which stand to lose the most (which is to say, everything) from even mild levels of global warming compared with our current state. In response to that advocacy, the IPCC was invited to publish, in 2018, a special report on the distinction in global risks between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming, as well as global emission pathways required to achieve one outcome vs. the other. Basically, to answer the question, “Is going through heroics to achieve 1.5°C of warming worth it compared to 2°C of warming? And, if so, is it possible?” This is that report.
What it says, in a nutshell. The report is detailed. It’s 5 chapters and hundreds of pages long. Its key conclusions are very succinctly summarized in a 3-page list of Headline Statements and a 33-page Summary for Policymakers. I highly recommend reading them both. If you’re American, read them before you vote on Nov. 6.
But this is also a case where a picture is worth thousands of words, and so I’d like to reproduce here a couple of the figures the scientists “drew.” If you take nothing else away from the Special Report, sit for a moment with these two images.
The top panel is a graph of global average temperature increase (above the pre-industrial average) vs. year. The grey, squiggly line up to 2017 is the historical measurements (the same data I discuss in detail here). It’s squiggly due to natural variations, which create statistical uncertainty represented by the orange band around the historical data. The orange dashed line is the average projected temperature going forward at the current rate of emissions and global warming, and the horizontal orange error bar represents the statistical uncertainty in the time at which warming will reach 1.5°C. So, we can expect to reach 1.5°C of warming around 2040, but anywhere between 2032 and 2050 accounting for uncertainty. (How old will you be? How about your kids? Your grandkids?)
The purple, grey, and bluish plumes to the right of the top panel are projected global temperature rises based on 3 emission scenarios illustrated in the bottom 3 panels of the figure. The leftmost panel (b) shows annual net CO2 emissions (amount of CO2 emitted by fossil fuel use minus amount of CO2 removed by tree growth, etc.), while the center panel (c) shows net cumulative CO2 emissions. The rightmost panel (c) shows cumulative “non-CO2 radiative forcing,” a fancy set of words for emissions of greenhouse gases other than CO2, such as methane. Starting with the “middle” grey plume of future temperatures, that’s what is expected if we follow the grey emission trajectories in the bottom panels: reduce our global net CO2 emissions to zero by 2055, in addition to a healthy reduction in other greenhouse gas emissions. If we accomplish the first part, but don’t reduce other greenhouse gas emissions, we get the purple projection. If we are more aggressive, reducing CO2 emissions to net zero by 2040, as well as accomplishing a healthy reduction in other greenhouse gases, we can achieve the bluish projection.
Thus, it remains possible to ensure we limit warming to 2°C, and it’s even still possible to limit warming to 1.5°C, but either scenario will require dramatic changes in our energy economy over the next 20-35 years.
These are bars that show scientists’ best consensus forecasts of the severity of impacts and extent of risks in each of a number of categories as a result of allowing the planet to warm various levels above pre-industrial temperatures. The grey band indicates our current level of warming. The risks and impacts get worse as the planet gets warmer (white = “no problem,” purple = “big and irreversible problems”). Anticipating skepticism and in acknowledgement that forecasts are uncertain, the risk colors in the various categories are labeled to indicate their levels of certainty based on available data (M = “medium,” H = “high,” VH = “very high”).
“Even the scientists were surprised to see … how much they could really differentiate and how great are the benefits of limiting global warming at 1.5 compared to 2 [degrees Celsius].”
You can easily see in these simple bars the reasoning behind a goal of limiting warming to at most 2°C, or better yet 1.5°C — that’s the range over which key risks and impacts of interest to us (“heat-related morbidity and mortality,” anyone?) are going from “detectable” to “severe and widespread.” Risks in many of these categories are specifically spelled out in simple language in the 3-page Headline Statements, a quick and informative read.
In looking at the graphs above, it’s important to remember the specificity of the question being answered in this latest Special Report. Don’t interpret the “worst” purple plume in the top graph to be “the worst case scenario.” Any of the projections in the above graphs are actually quite good scenarios, which will result from an impressive feat of social and technological success — transforming our economy to reach zero net carbon emissions by mid-century. When we have done that, we will have good reason to be proud!
For a “worst case,” you need to look at similar graphs published in the last full report of the IPCC, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014):
The above pair of graphs show, on top, annual carbon emissions historically (black) and into the future (various scenarios). The grey scenario is “business as usual,” in which we refuse to admit the problem and just keep on as we have been. The blue scenario is one similar to those considered in the new Special Report: reduction to zero net carbon emissions around mid-century. The bottom graph shows how much warming we expect for each of the given scenarios, which is just a simple result of how much total CO2 we’ve put into the atmosphere. “Business as usual” — climate change is a “Chinese hoax” and all that — is expected to get us around 4-5°C of warming.
Now, in the graph below, are the same risk bars applied to the broader range of temperature rise we might experience based on our choices starting right now. Lots of reds and purples associated with 4-5°C!
“This report gives policymakers and practitioners the information they need to make decisions that tackle climate change while considering local context and people’s needs. The next few years are probably the most important in our history.”
“You have scientists on both sides of it. My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years, Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture.”
(I can totally identify! My own Dad was a pharmacist for many years, and later the CEO of a hospital. I find I have natural instincts for both prescribing therapeutics and running medical institutions. So amazing, isn’t it, that one can be super good at something apparently fairly complex and specialized, even without any formal training in that thing, just by virtue of having a blood relative who was successful at it? Who wants to consult me about what to take for that rash? I’m pretty sure I can run a hospital in my sleep! Wanna come to my hospital during your next illness? Natural instincts, baby!)
“That is true, there are scientists on both sides. On one side, all the scientists. On the other, one guy who runs a blog called RealTrueAmericanScienceEagle.jesus.”
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes: “…what about the scientists who say [climate change is] worse than ever?”
President Donald Trump: “You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda, Leslie.”
Lesley Stahl: “I can’t bring them in.”
President Donald Trump: “Look, scientists also have a political agenda.”
I agree that scientists have a “very big political agenda:” To save the human race from making an enormous, needless mistake.
Beyond that, it’s hard to imagine what Trump could possibly mean by his assertion that “scientists also have a political agenda.”
It’s unclear to which scientists Trump is referring, but the other recent time he wondered aloud about the identity of scientists was in reference to the authors of the recently released IPCC Special Report, in which it was concluded that limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels will avoid significant risks our civilization will face if we only limit global warming to 2°C, and further that it will take substantial action by the world’s governments, the parties to the Paris Agreement of which have currently committed to voluntary actions that (assuming they are actually taken) may achieve the limitation of warming to around a much higher 3°C:
President Donald Trump: “It was given to me. It was given to me, and I want to look at who drew, you know, which group drew it. Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren’t so good.”
I am not a member of the President’s substantial White House staff, but it turns out I was able to rapidly identify the scientists Trump wants to know about. I used Google. Plus, I looked at the IPCC Special Report itself, which is publicly available. It took me about 10 minutes to discover a fairly detailed accounting of who the scientists are.
The IPCC Special Report was written by 91 scientists and government agents. Far from shrouding themselves in any sort of secrecy, many of them have been made available by the IPCC for public interviews; I suppose the President of the United States would likely be quite successful in availing himself of such an interview, if he can squeeze it into his existing schedule of other interviews with luminaries such as Kanye West. Of those lead authors, the greatest number (7) were Americans; the other 84 were from 43 other countries. The lead authors synthesized contributions from 133 contributing authors who drew scientific data and conclusions from over 6,000 cited references in the scientific literature, primarily peer reviewed scientific studies. Drafts of the report were reviewed by some 2,000 registered expert reviewers from 124 countries who generated 42,001 expert review comments that were considered during production of the final report.
So that’s the scientists, identified.
It’s hard to understand how such a diverse group of people could possibly have any common “political agenda,” as that phrase is usually understood to mean something like, “an attempt to achieve together a political outcome of mutual benefit,” unless that political agenda is simply reducing risks to the future of humanity based on knowledge. The scientists reside in over 40 nations, represent many tens of the world’s cultures, work for hundreds of separate institutions, and their work is financially supported by a tremendous number of independent sources. At least, the 84 of the lead authors who are not Americans are, by definition, not Democrats. The over 6,000 cited references from which the data were derived were each the result of an independent scientific study, most of them independently reviewed by any of thousands of combinations of other experts as part of the scientific peer review process. How could the scientists in question possibly mutually benefit in any financial or other way by perpetrating some sort of falsified set of conclusions? And how could such falsification possibly be achieved, even assuming the 91 lead authors wanted to do such a thing, given the scientific peer review process?
It’s just an absurd notion, and anyone who believes such a thing is willfully and outrageously ignorant.
Rather, I’ll submit that the scientists in question share precisely two things in common:
A belief in the scientific method; and
A love of children.
If that’s a “political agenda,” then I guess they’re guilty as charged.
As for President Donald Trump, I’ll further propose that he doesn’t like the scientists because:
Check this handy voting guide, prepared by Vote Climate U.S. PAC. The mission of the PAC is “to elect candidates to get off fossil fuels, transition to clean, renewable energy and put a price on carbon, in order to slow global warming and related weather extremes.”
The voting guide gives each candidate a score from 0 to 100 with respect to that goal based on voting records, public statements, etc. You can search for candidates by name or, conveniently, by your zip code.
If you aren’t convinced that mission is important, you could…
Check out the most recent Special Report released by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this past Monday, which concludes with scientific certainty that we are currently on track to pass 1.5 degrees C of warming, relative to pre-industrial times, by around 2040 and around 3 degrees C of warming by 2100 with dire consequences for much of the word’s population. (I recommend the “Headline Statements” and “Summary for Policymakers,” both brief and informative reads.)
All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives
35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate
36 of the 50 state governorships
Numerous other state and local elected officials
Homework:
What are your candidates’ beliefs, proposed policies, and sense of urgency regarding global climate change? Are they consistent with the scientific evidence, what we see with our own eyes, and the need to provide for future generations?
In my hometown of Hudson, WI, last month was unusually and noticeably warm. We normally open our backyard pool around Memorial Day. This year, it was open and in use a good 3 weeks earlier.
As it turns out, this type of experience was common.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently released its temperature and weather data for last month, and the contiguous United States had its warmest May since record keeping began in 1895.
Image credit: NOAA/NCEI. Mean temperature percentiles for May 2018 compared with all May’s during the 124-year period since 1895.
These are the most recent monthly temperature records that, along with recent annual temperature records (2016, 2017) have been set as part of a generally rising global temperature trend that has been observed since the Industrial Revolutions (for more information, see my detailed article).
