Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study

Australian researchers say a global tracker monitoring energy use per person points to 2C warming by 2030

The world is on track to reach dangerous levels of global warming much sooner than expected, according to new Australian research that highlights the alarming implications of rising energy demand.

University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers have developed a “global energy tracker” which predicts average world temperatures could climb 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2020.

That forecast, based on new modelling using long-term average projections on economic growth, population growth and energy use per person, points to a 2C rise by 2030.

The UN conference on climate change in Paris last year agreed to a 1.5C rise as the preferred limit to protect vulnerable island states, and a 2C rise as the absolute limit.

The new modelling is the brainchild of Ben Hankamer from UQ’s institute for molecular bioscience and Liam Wagner from Griffith University’s department of accounting, finance and economics, whose work was published in the journal Plos One on Thursday.

It is the first model to include energy use per person – which has more than doubled since 1950 – alongside economic and population growth as a way of predicting carbon emissions and corresponding temperature increases.

The researchers said the earlier than expected advance of global warming revealed by their modelling added a newfound urgency to the switch from fossil fuels to renewables.

Hankamer said: “The more the economy grows, the more energy you use ... the conclusion really is that economists and environmentalists are on the same side and have both come to the same conclusion: we’ve got to act now and we don’t have much time.”

Wagner said the model suggested the surge in energy consumption was not offset by improvements in energy efficiency.

He said energy use per person was on track to rise sixfold by 2050, which had dire implications for temperatures when combined with economic growth of 3.9% a year (the six-decade average) and a world population of 9 billion.
“Massive increases in energy consumption would be necessary to alleviate poverty for the nearly 50% of the world’s population who live on less than $2.50 a day,” Wagner said.

“We have a choice: leave people in poverty and speed towards dangerous global warming through the increased use of fossil fuels, or transition rapidly to renewables.”

Hankamer said: “When you think about statements like ‘coal is good for humanity’ because we’re pulling people out of poverty, it’s just not true”.

“You would have to burn so much coal in order to get the energy to provide people with a living to get them off $2.50 a day that [temperature rises] would just go through the roof very quickly.”

The researchers suggested switching $500bn in subsidies for fossil fuels worldwide to renewables as a “cost neutral” way to fast-track the energy transition.

Wagner said pulling the rug from out under the fossil fuels industry was a move of “creative destruction” and “more a political issue rather than an economic issue”.

“If we swapped those subsidies globally, of course we could have rapid improvement and deployment of renewables to cover our shift from fossil fuels,” he said.

“You’re pushing a huge amount of capital into a different sector that requires an enormous amount of growth, so you would actually see a great deal more growth from putting it into renewables than providing it for fossil fuels.”

Hankamer said the fact that about 80% of the world’s energy was for fuel, and only 20% for electricity, meant “we don’t have any easy solutions”.

“If we want to do this, we need to do things like solar fuels, or think about how we do battery technologies and fully transition to electric,” he said.

“The things that are going to be hard to replace are aviation fuels and things for heavy machinery and probably shipping.

“We can do electric cars for short runs but those things are going to be really hard to switch.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/10/dangerous-global-warming-will-happen-sooner-than-thought-study?CMP=share_btn_tw

Stormee wrote:All bullsh**, scare tic tacs to get more of our money.

The world has looked after itself for a few tears now.

All guesswork by people wanting to keep themselves in a good job.

sassy wrote:December 2015 was the wettest month ever recorded in the UK.  I have loads of flowers out!

Stormee wrote:All bullsh**, scare tic tacs to get more of our money.

The world has looked after itself for a few tears now.

All guesswork by people wanting to keep themselves in a good job.

Tommy Monk wrote:But it's not changing fast... in fact it hasn't changed at all for last 20 years...

Tommy Monk wrote:Natural fluctuations in global temperatures are always happening...

It has been warmer before...

We are coming out of a mini ice age...and returning to NORMAL TEMPERATURES!!!

Look it up you fools!!!

Look up "mini ice age" and "river Thames freezing"...

Tommy Monk wrote:Normal isn't just restricted to what happened recently...


Daffodils are always up around this time of year...


The river Thames regularly froze over a couple hundred years ago... but before then it didn't... and it doesn't now!


Look back a few centuries further and there is plenty of evidence of heavier rain and flooding in parts of uk... but there weren't the housing developments on the flood plains then so nobody complained then... but geological evidence is clear.


If you think that you can look at only a hundred years and then try to tell us that this is the normal and anything outside of this is abnormal... then you might as well be looking out the window one day and then trying to tell us that this is what should be expected to be seen as normal for the whole of the year!!!



Yeah sassy... the wettest ever... since records began only a hundred years ago...!!!


How about since before then...!?

Ben_Reilly wrote:It's a complicated issue, but with some people you can't even get into stuff like that -- they just want concepts that are simple and require little to no thought.

What I always like to ask, and what I will ask Tommy now -- if the climate is warming at a dangerously fast rate, why do so many scientists who study the climate as a profession insist that it is?

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:It's a complicated issue, but with some people you can't even get into stuff like that -- they just want concepts that are simple and require little to no thought.

What I always like to ask, and what I will ask Tommy now -- if the climate is warming at a dangerously fast rate, why do so many scientists who study the climate as a profession insist that it is?

 

I LIKED the way a visiting climate scientist from the USA put it, a few years back (again, my paraphrasing here..) :

"IF the world is heating up, and the climate changing, as fast as observations and the resultant scientific modelling would suggest, than it is already past time that mankind is cleaning up its' act...
IF it turns out that it isn't quite so bad, then we still won't have wasted the money, as the world is already heavily polluted, and overdue for cleaning up."

THOSE nongs pushing the oil/mining/energy lies and propaganda - like Tommy and Stormee in this thread - are part of the ongoing problem. NOT the solution..
THE longer those (ir)responsible corporations, their mindless puppets and supplicant politicians keep on delaying the fixes, the worse the eventual fallout will be. And more expensive those remedies will cost the world...

I Wonder how the Tommys and Stormees of this world wil explain to their grandchildren, just why they are being so gullibly forceful and thickheaded in continually denying the facts, and arguing against fixing the causes ?

Tommy Monk wrote:
Ignore history and believe bullshit instead...

Tommy Monk wrote:

Ignore history and believe bullshit instead...

Tommy Monk wrote:
"The Little Ice Age is a period between about 1300 and 1870 during which Europe and North America were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20th century. The period can be divided in two phases, the first beginning around 1300 and continuing until the late 1400s."


And when someone claims a weather event is "unprecedented" as it has never happened 'since records began'... all that means is in the last hundred years or so!!!


When you fools start to understand these two simple truths... then you may start to see things in the bigger picture...

Tommy Monk wrote:

And when someone claims a weather event is "unprecedented" as it has never happened 'since records began'... all that means is in the last hundred years or so!!!

Lord Foul wrote:rubbish tommy ...absolute rubbish

no winter to speak of for at least 25 years...apart from "odd ones"

whereas prior to that it was freezing from novenber at least ..and snow ...and deep snow often from back end of december onwards...

unprecedented levels of rainfall, more and regular high winds....

LESS thunderstorms in late summer/autumn

Oh yes its changing alright.....

and globally too

hurricanes of greter frequency and power

oceanic currents disrupted and changed......

eddie wrote:

Lord Foul wrote:rubbish tommy ...absolute rubbish

no winter to speak of for at least 25 years...apart from "odd ones"

whereas prior to that it was freezing from novenber at least ..and snow ...and deep snow often from back end of december onwards...

unprecedented levels of rainfall, more and regular high winds....

LESS thunderstorms in late summer/autumn

Oh yes its changing alright.....

and globally too

hurricanes of greter frequency and power

oceanic currents disrupted and changed......

I have noticed, over the last six months or so, that it has got much windier too!