Straight Up

Jeff Berardelli @WeatherProf, chief meteorologist and climate specialist at WFLA-TV (Tampa Bay) shared this chart on Twitter a few days ago:


(Click to enlarge for better readability.)

He summarized it this way:

Today's warming rate is more than 50X the rate after the last ice age.

The peak of the last ice age ended 20,000 years ago. From 20,000 to 10,000 years ago the climate warmed ~3 degrees C in 10,000 years. To put that into perspective, in just 200 years, we will likely warm the climate by ~3C. That is a rate 50X greater.

As Berardelli points out, the relative stability of the climate up to the time of the Industrial Revolution is what allowed humans to thrive and civilization as we know it to develop. "Stability is key to all of our interconnected systems/societies [and] supply chains." 

Not long after, Stanford professor Mark Jacobson posted a couple of summary tweets about the status of the truly clean energy transition he's been working to describe and recommend over the past 15 years or more. Jacobson identified a clean-energy path for every state and country:

Those who have advocated for, lobbied for, or otherwise pushed for non-Wind, Water, and Solar technologies have prevented a faster transition away from combustion fuels, slowing the solution, contributing to the highest temperatures in measurement history and to 7.4 million deaths per year from air pollution.

Ever since this 2009 article on the potential for a 100% WWS world, doubters have claimed we also need nuclear, carbon capture and storage, direct air capture, blue hydrogen + bioenergy. Yet, what has been the only solution making a dent in anthropogenic global warming, pollution, and energy security?

Wind, water, solar. 

We must focus.

As many people have joined Jacobson in saying: We know what works. Leave the carbon (and methane, and other greenhouse gases) in the ground. Transition to truly renewable energy (wind, water, solar) with storage as needed.

The height of that temperature climb, shown at the right side of Berardelli's graph, depends on just that.