tl;dr:
…neither a Biden presidency nor Trump presidency would put the U.S. on track to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, the benchmark needed to prevent catastrophic warming of over 1.5 degrees Celsius
As alarming as that is, however, it does not mean that Biden and Trump are the same…
…a Trump administration would still add an additional 4 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere by 2030 compared to a Biden administration, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis.
That additional 4 billion tons could add more than $900 billion in global climate damages compared to Biden, the study’s authors claim.
Hm
I sorta stand by my statements. Looking over the main graph in your link and doing some sloppy math, it looks like if the 10 year average temperature keeps following its linear line up, it’ll hit 1.5 C / 2.7 F above pre industrial instantaneous three years from now (that’ll be the result of averaging 2022-2031 if things keep going up the way they are, I.e. a smoothed graph will show an instantaneous +1.5 C value in 2027).
Of course, the other side of that is that there’s a strong argument that recent indications are that we’ve hit at least some of those tipping points you’re talking about, with implications that aren’t yet understood by anybody, and so it makes more sense to talk about instantaneous values now, than it does to assume that everything will definitely continue linearly from now until 2031 and so we can smooth the big spikes we’ve been seeing since 2023 back into that linear path because they won’t continue. That’s possible, but to me the probability of it is less than 50/50.
The one encouraging thing I will say is that the leveling off of emissions since 2018 or so is palpable on the emissions graph. It’s not just going aggressively up every year anymore, which is, no joke, to be celebrated a little bit. We’re starting to cope with the problem. I thought it was still shooting up every year. But, of course, even if we’re lucky and there are no tipping points involved, the huge sustained level value on the emissions graph still translates into a steady slope up on the temperature graph, which means we hit 1.5 instantaneous in 2027 or so by this data.
I like your explanation of total heat in the atmosphere, and temperature as an easy proxy for the more accurate numbers in the model… a lot of this stuff is new to me and you gave a lot of detail so thank you.
Honestly, I think the small appearance of 1.5 C in the public mind is overstated. There are quite a lot of people who understand on some level the size of the catastrophe; that’s why people like Greta Thunberg who speak plainly about it get popular. To them, they tie 1.5 to the catastrophe and measuring the scope, not to turning up the thermostat in their house. The people who are saying who cares about 1.5 degrees are mostly operating on denial and bullshit anyway; I think the number of people who are coming at it from an honest perspective but then can be swayed back to thinking it’ll be okay because 1.5 is a small number is less than it would seem.
But yeah, we fucked. Doesn’t mean stop doing everything we can for better outcomes (which, I will fully admit I am not doing on a personal level), but the outcome is gonna be real real bad.