3 CLIMATE

The world is heating - and has been doing so for all my lifetime. As climate change becomes observable we are slowly waking up from our industrial business.

But the observed warming is only the precursor - the canary in the mine - of what is in the pipeline of global warming.

The climate system is full of lags and feedbacks. What we in our ignorance have ignited will spill out long after science understood what was happening. The lagged effects of what we have already completed will stay with us however much we now regret.

Ironically - as our fight against atmosperic pollution helps improve health - the clearer sky accelerates global warming. We are headed for +4C in this century.

3.2 Figures

3.2.1 Warming

Fig: Accelerated Warming in the Pipline.4

  1. https://mailchi.mp/caa/earths-energy-imbalance-and-climate-response-time (Hansen (2022) Global Warming in the Pipeline (pdf) gives the broader background.)↩︎