Arguments
The doom spiral
Posted on 17 September 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
In his last post, Zeke discussed incredible warmth of 2023 and 2024 and its implications for future warming. A few readers looked at it and freaked out:
This is terrifying
and
This update really put me in a spiral. I want to have hope, but when people like Leon Simons surround your articles with scary language, it’s hard not to become a Doomer. Not sure, what I am going for with this comment, just a soul reaching out.
and
Feeling doomed
Please don’t feel this way!
There are two facts that keep me grounded, and here they are:
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When humans stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the climate will stop warming.
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We have the technology to mostly stop emissions over the next few decades.
Zero-emissions commitment
The amount of warming the Earth experiences after emissions stop is known in the climate biz as the zero-emissions commitment, often abbreviated ZEC.
Recent work over the last decade suggests that the ZEC is zero. In other words, once we stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the climate will stop warming. For example, we can simulate this in models and they show:
The left panel shows atmospheric abundance of CO2 when emissions cease and it shows that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere starts to decline as soon as we stop emitting CO2. The right panel shows temperature after emissions stop. Some models show a few tenths of a degree of warming and others a few tenths of a degree of cooling. However, our central estimate is that the global average temperature does not change once emissions stop.
We have a good theoretical understanding of this: the decline in radiative forcing from the CO2 decrease cancels the disequilibrum between the ocean’s mixed layer and the radiative forcing, so there’s no net warming.
Now for the second fact …
You’re living through an energy revolution
We are living through a legitimate, once-in-a-lifetime energy revolution. The last one was 150 years ago when the fossil-fuel era started. Today, we're moving from that energy system, which is based on burning crap, to one based on directly generating electricity from renewable energy sources.
The main driver is the decreased the costs of solar and wind power, making them competitive with fossil fuel energy sources. These power sources directly produce electricity, so a grid running on them is far more efficient than one that produces electricity from heat.
Because wind and solar are intermittent energy sources, we still need a backbone of fossil fuels to handle the times when those are not producing enough. Analysis from energy experts have concluded that we can have a system that’s 90% clean energy and (on average) 10% natural gas in 2035 and pay about the same amount for electricity as we’re paying today. If you factor in the externalities of fossil fuels (e.g., air pollution) the cost of energy on that cleaner grid will actually be far cheaper.
But it gets better: Battery innovation is moving at astonishing speed and it seems very likely to me that, within a decade, batteries will be able to store excess energy during peak production times and release it when demand exceeds supply. This will allow to ditch the natural gas backbone.
So what’s stopping us from solving the problem?
Fossil fuels are a multi-trillion dollar industry, arguably the most powerful in the history of humanity. With deep financial reserves and extensive influence over global economic and political systems, these industries are not going to accept defeat in the market.
Fossil fuel interests are therefore deploying their nearly unlimited resources to rig the market. They’re using strategies that range from aggressive public relations campaigns, spreading misinformation, and pushing compliant politicians to enact policies that hinder the development of alternative energy technologies. One need look no further than Project 2025 to see a recipe for how policymakers entrench fossil fuels in our society.
Why does this make me optimistic? Because it means that climate change is not a scientific or technical problem — it’s a political problem. And political problems can be solved by voting.
Never forget that there is a better world we can reach in the next few decades: a world without human-caused climate change, without air pollution, and without energy-caused geopolitical instability. Fossil-fuel interests are doing everything they can to stop us from getting there.
So rather than get depressed and enter the doom spiral, commit to do something. If you want to live in that better world, take action: talk to your friends, phone bank for politicians who care about climate change, and make sure your climate-concerned friends all vote.
If you get too depressed to fight back, fossil-fuel interests win. Don’t let them.
Related stuff
Read the indispensable Renewable Revolution on the transition from primitive heat to modern work, then subscribe.
Read the Berkeley 2035 report on how we can get to a 90% clean grid by 2035.
The Net Zero America report shows how to get to net zero by 2050 and pay historically comparable prices for energy.
I love the 99% invisible podcast. They’re doing a series called “Not Built for This” about adaptation to climate change. I’ve listened to the first few episodes and it’s great.
Hi, Andrew,
I'm not on X, but I saw this fresh post by you here! Do you know why DNS lookup currently fails for theclimatebrink.com?
I first noticed it about an hour ago.
TIA.
Your Bulldog, Mal
Mal Adapted @1
Thanks for the heads-up. I just now sent an email to Zeke to let him and Andrew know about the issue.
Thank you!
Sadly, climate scientist have no time to follow the path single discussions on feedbacks take. Therefore, they think models can in anyway predict what is comming. Unfortunately they can't! So many models errors of Earth system developments now amerging that one can only vomit.
Thererby, models miss way too many feedbacks which are now soming into motion.
The Amazon is now trapped in the vicious cycle, speeding up its collapse decades earlier then predicted. Antarctic heatwaves and see ice losses also happens decades earlier then predicted.
The methane feedback has started while models did not see a significant signal till 2100 to emerge. The methane modul of models is crap! But do not know if the new one is already deployed.
Be it as it may, the warmings of the Arctic methane bomb are now out and will increase the comming years as recent observational studies are quite worring. Not only Yedoma permafrost emits much more, but the real danger will be geological methane from methane hydrates and gas rich sediment layers, which is a wild card, which is ever more observed and documented - methane of thermogenic origion reaches the atmosphere where measurements have been made, while ground water melts its way downward through cracs driven by osmosis.
Marine heatwaves, a feedback of oceans warming too fast, are also not predicable by models as they are driven by small scale to global circulation patterns in the oceans and atmosphere. We have now the first MHW in the North Pacific reaching in its peak regions some 7-8°C above the 1981-2011 average (one cause: Asian flooding amplifying the subtropical North Pacfic high via hot upper air currents).
Not only that marine heatwaves expanded non-linear, they are also a game changer in terms of ocean heat uptake, circulation patterns, and extreme events. Models were not able to predict their spread which can only be described as nuts.
Next problem we face is that over the oceans first 300m ocean heat is now building up, in the mode water and intermediate water mass regions the heat buildup spreads to deeper layers with subsurface water masses warming, freshening, and expanding. Very bad sign indeed!
First study came now out that vertical mixing of the oceans could already be suppresed by increasing stratification. Further, we see worrying changes in mode water masses in the Northern Hemisphere. At the same time recent changes around Antarctica (e.g. warming and hemispheric temperature gradient declining -oops!) are also worrying as it has been the Southern Ocean that had been mostly responsible for the monotoic trend of incrasing heat uptake the last 20 years - intensfying winds around Antarctica the major reson (Ozone hole supported that development of increasing hemispheric temeprature gradient).
Just now the experts of ocean mxing and ocean heat uptake trying frantically to find out which processes controlls heat uptake of the oceans as we did never really loocked into it. But now the changes become so worrying that our simple assumption that the oceans would continue their monotoic trend in increasing heat uptake like nothing was amiss doesn't matter how fast we warm our planet had been way too simple.
If ocean heat uptake declines from 90% of the extra energy to 80%, the whole goes fast bam, as a too fast warming had been the problem in the first place.
And if oceans should start to take less than 90% of the extrem energy kept in the system, all the other feedbacks will be triggered.
This can go very fast! Doomer? Stupid framing of the system, as the above is in all points a real possibility as we do not know when and how fast feedbacks could start to synchronize.
And if this should happen the only chance humanity will have, will be to reduce GHG conrentrations in the atmsphere as fast as we can do it united as a species figthing for its own survival!
Sadly, many climate scientist have become statisticans and thereby they have lost contact with reality as the discussions deep in the mechanics of our climate systems point something very clear out:
We are now flying blind and even an extinction level event is a possibility whch can progress fast!
Jan @4 , your ideas are all very fine.
But rather than basing your thoughts on climate models and/or on speculations ~ you could look at the Earth's geological history. Such as what happened during the warmer period of the Eemian, around 120,000 years ago.
Jan @4,
I don't think I can agree with your assertion that with AGW, "we are now flying blind."
Climate scientists are well aware of the potential for nasty surprises being stoked by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. For some time now, the message has been that anything warmer than a +1.5ºC world is running the risk of bringing on some of those nasty surprises. (This safety limit was originally +2.0ºC prior to ~2010.) Mind, extinction of the human race will be far from the first nasty surprise to arrive. Of course, logically it would be the last but, that said, it would be a long long way down the road in terms of global tmperature rise.
The big risk we face not addressing AGW (which is where we are today) is messing the climate enough to bring the global economy crashing down around our ears, an economy the vast majority of humanity rely on to keep them fed and watered.
You do make some very brave assertions which I consider are difficult to support.
As an example, I would question some of your comment on the "methane feedback."
Present natural methane emissions have not been easily quantified but they are included in the climate modelling and their growth has been a part of the projected methane forcing. Certainly recent work suggests the modelled natural emissions are running behind the assessed natural emissions and projections are not capturing the full picture. But this is not to the extent that natural methane would become a significant feedback mechanism. (See for instance Kleine et al (2021) or Zhang et al (2023).) However, the increase in natural methane emissions is one of the potential nasty surpises.
One area of natural methane emissions where people often express great concern is the Arctic emissions, an understandable concern but one which is misplaced. Years ago I went down this road myself.
But it should be said that your brave assertions do require supporting evidence.