Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023Liked by Hannah Ritchie
Hannah, this is a great example of how while we might not always agree, we greatly admire your work. We find your intellectual honesty and avoidance of fear mongering so refreshing.
We like per capita comparisons for use in some situations but not in others.
And, the world should be infinitely grateful for your outstanding work. OWID is of enormous value. We wish more people would be more curious and use it more frequently.
Great post as always Hannah. I'd be really interested if you could do a post focused on the sulphur dioxide cooling effects and how much of an issue that is likely to be. E.g. how rapid would the warming impact be if this cooling effect was limited via policy changes?
Very good presentation of basic numbers BUT there's a huge problem. You walk up to it when you state.
"You might notice that this adds up to 1.6°C. That’s already past the 1.5°C global target! The reason is that this data does not include the cooling effects of sulphur dioxide and aerosols. When we include them, the net change in global mean surface temperature is around 1.1°C. That’s the number we’re used to hearing."
Huzzah, you are the first "Climate Optimist" I have seen acknowledge this fact. A fact that was clearly shown in the graph of the IPCC, Climate Change 2021 Summary for Policymakers, page 7.
Real Warming is already at 1.6C-2.0C per the IPCC estimate in 2021. We are OBSERVING 1.2C of Warming and there is an ESTIMATED 0.3C-0.8C of MASKED Warming in the Climate System.
You say it yourself, there are cooling effects of Sulfur Dioxides (SOx) that we know are in place, yet we only have a rough estimate for.
“Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change. Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970.”
How are we doing this?
Mostly by injecting massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere all around the planet via the diesel fuel used in the world’s shipping and military fleets. This cools the planet by making it more reflective to the sun’s energy. It increases the Earth’s albedo.
The shipping industry is among the world’s largest emitters of sulfur behind the energy industry, with the sulfur dioxide (SOx) content in heavy fuel oil up to 3,500 times higher than the latest European diesel standards for vehicles.
“One large vessel in one day can emit more sulfur dioxide than all the new cars that come onto the world’s roads in a year.”
The important thing to remember is.
If we stop putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, ALL the cooling effect goes away in 3–5 years.
Now, what happened in 2020 that is related to this and has a HUGE effect on what's about to happen to our weather over the next 3-5 years?
IN 2020 WE CUT THE SULFUR CONTENT IN MARITIME FUELS BY 6/7ths.
The International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee met in London on Oct. 24–28 (2016) and decided to impose a global cap on SOx emissions starting from 2020, which would see sulfur emissions fall from the current maximum of 3.5 percent of fuel content to 0.5 percent.
In January 2020 the European Commission followed through on that ruling.
Cleaner Air in 2020: 0.5% sulfur cap for ships enters into force worldwide
From January 2020, the maximum sulphur content of marine fuels is reduced to 0.5% (down from 3.5%) globally — reducing air pollution and protecting health and the environment. Sulphur Oxide (SOx) emissions from ships’ combustion engines cause acid rain and generate fine dust that can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as reduced life expectancy.
Now it's three years later and SOx concentrations in the atmosphere are crashing.
How much MASKED HEAT are we about to get?
Because, we know from previous "volcanic winter" episodes like Pinatubo in the 90's, that ALL of that MASKED HEAT will happen in the next 2-3 years. It's about to get HOT.
I think this might be a little wrong, but am uncertain. A bit of googling has told me that coal and oil based power plants emit a lot of sulfur dioxide, as does copper smelting. The cut you talk about doesn't seem to affect that. So I'm not sure how much of a "crash" in SO2 is coming, although I expect emissions of SO2 will continue to decrease in rich countries like the US and EU, as it seems to have done since the later 20th century.
Additionally, I can't seem to find a source for SO2 leaving the atmosphere very quickly. I'd love to read it!
Finally, I'm a bit conflicted here since SO2 seems to have negative effects on human health and the way it cools the planet is via global dimming, which probably reduces agricultural yields compared to the counterfactual of no SO2 being in the atmosphere. Because of these, it at least isn't immediately obvious to me that SO2 emissions are net beneficial or net harmful for humans and animals.
Power plant emissions are larger than marine emissions in total. You are correct about that. Marine emissions are #2 in terms of SOx emissions by volume.
However,
Power plant emissions are "fixed location" they create regional effects on the climate by changing reflectivity in the plume of their exhaust. Marine emissions cover the world's oceans in their entirety. This makes their effect global.
Marine emissions are more consequential than power plant emissions in terms of "global cooling".
Later that year, in December 2020, this study “Beyond SOx reductions from shipping: assessing the impact of NOx and carbonaceous-particle controls on human health and climate” was published. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc718
In this study, sponsored by the EU Commission, the authors concluded that.
Historically, cargo ships have been powered by low-grade fossil fuels, which emit particles and particle-precursor vapors that impact human health and climate. We used a global chemical-transport model with online aerosol microphysics (GEOS-Chem-TOMAS) to estimate the aerosol health and climate impacts of four emission-control policies: (1) 85% reduction in sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions (Sulf); (2) 85% reduction in SOx and black carbon (BC) emissions (Sulf-BC); (3) 85% reduction in SOx, BC, and organic aerosol (OA) emissions (Sulf-BC-OA); and (4) 85% reduction in SOx, BC, OA, and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx).
The SOx reductions reflect the 0.5% fuel-sulfur cap implemented by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on 1 January 2020. The other reductions represent realistic estimates of future emission-control policies. We estimate that these policies could reduce fine particulate matter (PM2.5)-attributable mortalities by 13 300 (Sulf) to 38 600 (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx) mortalities per year. These changes represent 0.3% and 0.8%, respectively, of annual PM2.5-attributable mortalities from anthropogenic sources. Comparing simulations, we estimate that adding the NOx cap has the greatest health benefit.
In contrast to the health benefits, all scenarios lead to a simulated climate warming tendency. The combined aerosol direct radiative effect and cloud-albedo indirect effects (AIE) are between 27 mW m−2 (Sulf) and 41 mW m−2 (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx). These changes are about 2.1% (Sulf) to 3.2% (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx) of the total anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing. The emission control policies examined here yield larger relative changes in the aerosol radiative forcing (2.1%–3.2%) than in health effects (0.3%–0.8%), because most shipping emissions are distant from populated regions.
Valuation of the impacts suggests that these emissions reductions could produce much larger marginal health benefits ($129–$374 billion annually) than the marginal climate costs ($12–$17 billion annually).
Which shows you that governmental agencies are already weighing “lives saved” versus “climate costs”. In this case estimating that the health benefits of not killing 3–4 million people a year was worth more than the extra warming caused by reducing the amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere.
That’s what Dr. Hansen is disagreeing with. He thinks that there will be far more warming from the reduction in sulfur dioxide than the authors of this study anticipated.
SOx enhances the planetary albedo, it makes the Earth more reflective. "Dimming" is when the albedo becomes less reflective. Reductions in SOx cause the Earth to absorb more solar radiation because less is reflected back into space.
This is also happening "right now". Here’s the bad news: the Earth’s albedo has been declining during the last 20 years.
Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine pub. Aug 2021
Earth observation satellites are constantly measuring the Earth’s albedo using a suite of sensors, and the reflectivity of the planet is measured through earthshine, the light from the Earth that reflects off the Moon. This paper analyzes earthshine measurements between 1998 and 2017 to see if the Earth’s albedo is rising or declining in response to climate change. Here’s their conclusion.
“We have reported a two-decade long data set of the Earth’s nearly globally averaged albedo as derived from earthshine observations. Stringent data quality standards were applied to generate monthly and annual means. These vary significantly on monthly, annual, and decadal scales with the net being a gradual decline over the two decades, which accelerated in the most recent years (much of the decrease in reflectance occurred during the last three years of the two-decade period the team studied). Remarkably, the inter-annual earthshine anomalies agree well with those from CERES satellite observations, despite their differences in global coverage, underlying assumptions to derive the albedo, and the very different sensitivities to retroflected and wider-angle reflected light.”
The two-decade decrease in earthshine-derived albedo corresponds to an increase in radiative forcing of about 0.5 W/m2, which is climatologically significant (Miller et al., 2014). For comparison, total anthropogenic forcing increased by about 0.6 W/m2 over the same period. The CERES data show an even stronger trend of decreasing global albedo over the most recent years, which has been associated to changes in the PDO, SSTs and low cloud formation changes. It is unclear whether these changes arise from the climate’s internal variability or are part of the feedback to external forcings.”
Notice that last paragraph. It quantifies how much of an effect this change in albedo is having. By 2017 it had reached 0.5 W/m2 (Watts per square meter). That doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that the effect of all our CO2 pollution in 2017 was 0.6 W/m2. Bottom line,
By 2017 the decline in the Earth’s albedo doubled the rate that the Earth was warming. We are warming up twice as fast as we were.
Now, 20 year studies by 2 separate teams using different methodologies reaching the same conclusion might not mean anything to you but that's the "gold standard" of science.
The Earth's Albedo has dimmed and more ENERGY is flowing into the Climate System.
This was such a clean well summarized easy to read article. 👏👏👏👏
I'm not interested in the blame game per se as nations are in different stages of their own evolutions but would also like to see this applied to say plastic pollution, hazardous waste, water pollution etc.......
Fine work that is very informative. A query on the per capita emissions problem. Granted it is problematic when considering CUMULATIVE emissions but is it not valid to at least do so when looking at the ANNUAL emissions data for a country when you know the population for that year.
This is really interesting. Often we hear estimates of warming by 2100 or 2050; I wonder how the data would change if instead we calculated the net effect by 2100 of emissions up to today
If I'm reading correctly, all of this is calculating the warming contribution by country rather than the net warming contribution. Do you know why the authors chose to do that?
New research from eminent climate scientist Prof James Hansen and colleagues suggests a civilization killing event. This is based on current CO2 levels in the atmosphere, not on future emissions. ‘Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone – after slow feedbacks operate – is about 10°C.
A relevant per capita metric would be cumulative adjusted GHGs divided by cumulative person-years since 1851. If we take the concept of carbon budget seriously, we can certainly imagine that each individual is born with a carbon budget per year per person, say 2 tons of CO2 eq per year per person. We can then figure out which country has exceeded its country carbon budget by the largest amount on per capita and aggregate terms.
That there is no good way to geographically standardize this measurement should be cause for a serious pause in thought: what is the value in mapping cumulative contributions toward climate change? Presumably, such a project is rooted in a crude notion of "environmental justice," suggesting that the burden of addressing climate change today (and into the future) should be disproportionately assigned to members of global society based on the historical track record of where they find themselves living. But is this really justice? The vast majority of humanity (~98%) lives in the country in which they were born, so our national residence is not much of a choice. And for those two percent who have moved across borders, does their responsibility suddenly go up or down by migrating internationally? Can someone from China be absolved of their presumed climate guilt by moving to New Zealand? Does someone from El Salvador inherit historical climate guilt by moving to the United States?
We need measures that help us create actions now that can effectively move us toward a better and more sustainable future. Looking backwards like this harms that cause, rather than helps. There is a very good and basic rule in cartography and spatial analysis: if you cannot standardize the data across your geographical units of analysis, then you need new data or new geographical units. And it does not help much, either, that the geographic units used here have changed quite a bit during the nearly two centuries being analyzed.
Despite the thoughtful presentation, this is an example of "How to Lie with Maps" (hat tip to Mark Monmonier), and I will be using it as an example of how *not* to do Geography with my undergrads. Thank you, I guess, for the classroom-discussion fodder. But also thank you, sincerely, for the excellent work you and the Our World in Data team generally do. Your resources are invaluable, almost always as good examples that further our understanding of world geography, not bad examples to critique.
Oh, I think there is value in looking at cumulative emissions by country.
Another name for the Anthropocene is the Eurokleptocene. Because a handful of countries have gotten obscenely wealthy by using fossil fuels to power their industrial revolutions.
The US, British, and Europeans have "used up" about 80% of the Global Carbon budget that was available to use. Burning more will put everyone at peril.
Yet we want to DEMAND that China must solve their "carbon emissions" before we do anything. Do you have any idea what a bunch of a-holes America looks like to the rest of the world?
We are the guy who goes out to lunch with a group, orders 5 cocktails, lobster, steak, and dessert. Then wants to split the check evenly.
If there is no justice from America and the Europeans on this, the Global 80% who aren't WHITE will align with China and sanction the US.
Because WHITE America may not believe in Climate Change but the rest of the world isn't as willfully blind and as stupid.
How is contribution, eg. for Slovenia calculated, since we had been part of Yugoslavia before we became independent?
Also, would it be possible to calculte contribution per country area? Slovenia contributed only 0.0007 °C to total global warming, but how much is it only for our area, wich is 20271 sq km?
The BIG STORY you are all missing is that the RATE of WARMING has changed dramatically upwards. The observable warming is only half the problem, the SPEED of the warming is what will crash all of our efforts for a sustainable future.
Do you know the current rate of Warming?
From 1975-2015 it was about 0.18C per decade. Do you know what is now?
GISS is saying 0.225C per decade. Hansen is saying 0.36C per decade.
From the amount of energy flow into the oceans since 2015, I would say Hansen is probably right.
We are out of time. We have to do a "crash translation" of the global energy system "right now".
That's what the Climate Scientists mean when they say it's "Now or Never".
“Now or Never” is not a scientifically sound statement. Alarmists have been saying that for over 10 years and it was obviously not true, but anyone who thinks that is not operating under the scientific method.
Yes, DOUBLING the RATE OF WARMING to 0.36C PER DECADE is going to be "just fine".
You do understand this means 2C of additional warming by 2080.
This rate of warming will crash global civilization. We will not be able to adjust in that time span without a global emergency being declared and a global effort made to control/manage it.
What the hell do you think the UN Secretary General means when he states the we are in a "Climate Crisis"?
There is no way that 1 more degree of warming in the next 50 years will crash civilization. It’s much more likely an asteroid impact, nuclear war or AI apocalypse will do it.
It's about FOOD you fool. We are about to have a 30-50% reduction in agricultural outputs globally. Do you ever take your head out of your butt and pay attention to what's happening in the "real world"?
When the UN talks about "multifocal agricultural output failures" they are saying that multiple breadbasket regions are about to have very bad years.
Why do you think China purchased so much grain in 2021?
They are sitting on 50% of the global grain reserves. Enough to feed their population for 18 months.
Xi and Putin have better Climate Models than we do because they never had Exxon and the fossil fuel industry throwing sand in the gears during the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
Recent records disgorged by Exxon in Senate investigations found that Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy’ starting in the 1970s. Harvard and Potsdam researchers analyzed Exxon’s predictive “skill scores,” or how their predictions matched what actually happened.
They found that Exxon scientists were producing climate research in the 70’s and 80’s with an average skill score of 75 percent.
In comparison, NASA scientist James Hansen, who famously presented his global warming predictions to Congress in 1988, had an average skill score of 66 percent.
Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better.
When Exxon said shit like this in the late 90’s.
“The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,”
— Exxon ad, addressing proposals in the late 1990s for the U.S. to join an international climate accord (like the Paris Accord) at the time.
THEY WERE LYING. THEY HAVE BEEN LYING TO US FOR DECADES.
With a couple degrees of warming vast areas of Siberia and Canada will expand arable land to a great degree and the melting glaciers will supply plenty of clean water. The increased CO2 in the atmosphere will improve most crop yields (only maize is unlikely to increase, but its water consumption will fall). The only threat to food supplies is the elimination of natural gas needed to produce fertilizer and diesel to run the agricultural equipment.
My, it must be nice in the fantasy world you live in. Do you do ANY research on these topics?
Any at all?
#1 Google Batagay Slump in Siberia. That's what "real" permafrost melt looks like. It turns into completely unusable badlands. Forget farming, you cannot even build on it. It's that unstable.
It will "eventually" be usable. In a few hundred years.
FYI: 65% of Russia is permafrost. Putin, knows that.
#2 Melting Glaciers (?)
I'm confused. Do you have any understanding of any subject?
The "Big 3" Glacial Deposits of water on Earth are Antarctica, Greenland, and the Tibetan Plateau (Google "third pole").
Now, glacial melt in Antarctica is not exactly useful. In fact, a new paper on the 29th warns that so much meltwater is coming off the continent, it is going to cause the Southern Oceans to stagnate.
Glacial melt in Greenland is also, not useful. Particularly now that we can see Greenland is an arpeligo and not a unified landmass.
So, are you thinking glacial melt is going to be useful in Asia?
You are wrong.
In an unexpected consequence of Global Warming. The melt of the Tibetan Glaciers is causing massive erosion and weathering of of rocks in their drainage channels. This is releasing arsenic onto the water supply of most of India.
In what the WHO has termed "the worst mass poisoning in history" the population of India is being poisoned by arsenic in their drinking water. As the glaciers melt this will get worse.
So, that Glacial Melt. Also, not useful.
You really need to read something scientific once in a while.
Hannah, this is a great example of how while we might not always agree, we greatly admire your work. We find your intellectual honesty and avoidance of fear mongering so refreshing.
We like per capita comparisons for use in some situations but not in others.
And, the world should be infinitely grateful for your outstanding work. OWID is of enormous value. We wish more people would be more curious and use it more frequently.
Great post as always Hannah. I'd be really interested if you could do a post focused on the sulphur dioxide cooling effects and how much of an issue that is likely to be. E.g. how rapid would the warming impact be if this cooling effect was limited via policy changes?
Very good presentation of basic numbers BUT there's a huge problem. You walk up to it when you state.
"You might notice that this adds up to 1.6°C. That’s already past the 1.5°C global target! The reason is that this data does not include the cooling effects of sulphur dioxide and aerosols. When we include them, the net change in global mean surface temperature is around 1.1°C. That’s the number we’re used to hearing."
Huzzah, you are the first "Climate Optimist" I have seen acknowledge this fact. A fact that was clearly shown in the graph of the IPCC, Climate Change 2021 Summary for Policymakers, page 7.
Real Warming is already at 1.6C-2.0C per the IPCC estimate in 2021. We are OBSERVING 1.2C of Warming and there is an ESTIMATED 0.3C-0.8C of MASKED Warming in the Climate System.
You say it yourself, there are cooling effects of Sulfur Dioxides (SOx) that we know are in place, yet we only have a rough estimate for.
In this paper “Climate effects of aerosols reduce economic inequality” published in 2020, the lead author states: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0699-y
“Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change. Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970.”
How are we doing this?
Mostly by injecting massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere all around the planet via the diesel fuel used in the world’s shipping and military fleets. This cools the planet by making it more reflective to the sun’s energy. It increases the Earth’s albedo.
The shipping industry is among the world’s largest emitters of sulfur behind the energy industry, with the sulfur dioxide (SOx) content in heavy fuel oil up to 3,500 times higher than the latest European diesel standards for vehicles.
“One large vessel in one day can emit more sulfur dioxide than all the new cars that come onto the world’s roads in a year.”
The important thing to remember is.
If we stop putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, ALL the cooling effect goes away in 3–5 years.
Now, what happened in 2020 that is related to this and has a HUGE effect on what's about to happen to our weather over the next 3-5 years?
IN 2020 WE CUT THE SULFUR CONTENT IN MARITIME FUELS BY 6/7ths.
The International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee met in London on Oct. 24–28 (2016) and decided to impose a global cap on SOx emissions starting from 2020, which would see sulfur emissions fall from the current maximum of 3.5 percent of fuel content to 0.5 percent.
In January 2020 the European Commission followed through on that ruling.
Cleaner Air in 2020: 0.5% sulfur cap for ships enters into force worldwide
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_6837
From January 2020, the maximum sulphur content of marine fuels is reduced to 0.5% (down from 3.5%) globally — reducing air pollution and protecting health and the environment. Sulphur Oxide (SOx) emissions from ships’ combustion engines cause acid rain and generate fine dust that can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as reduced life expectancy.
Now it's three years later and SOx concentrations in the atmosphere are crashing.
How much MASKED HEAT are we about to get?
Because, we know from previous "volcanic winter" episodes like Pinatubo in the 90's, that ALL of that MASKED HEAT will happen in the next 2-3 years. It's about to get HOT.
We are about to have a MASSIVE CLIMATE SHOCK.
I think this might be a little wrong, but am uncertain. A bit of googling has told me that coal and oil based power plants emit a lot of sulfur dioxide, as does copper smelting. The cut you talk about doesn't seem to affect that. So I'm not sure how much of a "crash" in SO2 is coming, although I expect emissions of SO2 will continue to decrease in rich countries like the US and EU, as it seems to have done since the later 20th century.
Additionally, I can't seem to find a source for SO2 leaving the atmosphere very quickly. I'd love to read it!
Finally, I'm a bit conflicted here since SO2 seems to have negative effects on human health and the way it cools the planet is via global dimming, which probably reduces agricultural yields compared to the counterfactual of no SO2 being in the atmosphere. Because of these, it at least isn't immediately obvious to me that SO2 emissions are net beneficial or net harmful for humans and animals.
Another fact that shows how eliminating fossil fuel use will cause many more problems that environmental alarmists ignore.
Power plant emissions are larger than marine emissions in total. You are correct about that. Marine emissions are #2 in terms of SOx emissions by volume.
However,
Power plant emissions are "fixed location" they create regional effects on the climate by changing reflectivity in the plume of their exhaust. Marine emissions cover the world's oceans in their entirety. This makes their effect global.
Marine emissions are more consequential than power plant emissions in terms of "global cooling".
Later that year, in December 2020, this study “Beyond SOx reductions from shipping: assessing the impact of NOx and carbonaceous-particle controls on human health and climate” was published. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc718
In this study, sponsored by the EU Commission, the authors concluded that.
Historically, cargo ships have been powered by low-grade fossil fuels, which emit particles and particle-precursor vapors that impact human health and climate. We used a global chemical-transport model with online aerosol microphysics (GEOS-Chem-TOMAS) to estimate the aerosol health and climate impacts of four emission-control policies: (1) 85% reduction in sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions (Sulf); (2) 85% reduction in SOx and black carbon (BC) emissions (Sulf-BC); (3) 85% reduction in SOx, BC, and organic aerosol (OA) emissions (Sulf-BC-OA); and (4) 85% reduction in SOx, BC, OA, and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx).
The SOx reductions reflect the 0.5% fuel-sulfur cap implemented by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on 1 January 2020. The other reductions represent realistic estimates of future emission-control policies. We estimate that these policies could reduce fine particulate matter (PM2.5)-attributable mortalities by 13 300 (Sulf) to 38 600 (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx) mortalities per year. These changes represent 0.3% and 0.8%, respectively, of annual PM2.5-attributable mortalities from anthropogenic sources. Comparing simulations, we estimate that adding the NOx cap has the greatest health benefit.
In contrast to the health benefits, all scenarios lead to a simulated climate warming tendency. The combined aerosol direct radiative effect and cloud-albedo indirect effects (AIE) are between 27 mW m−2 (Sulf) and 41 mW m−2 (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx). These changes are about 2.1% (Sulf) to 3.2% (Sulf-BC-OA-NOx) of the total anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing. The emission control policies examined here yield larger relative changes in the aerosol radiative forcing (2.1%–3.2%) than in health effects (0.3%–0.8%), because most shipping emissions are distant from populated regions.
Valuation of the impacts suggests that these emissions reductions could produce much larger marginal health benefits ($129–$374 billion annually) than the marginal climate costs ($12–$17 billion annually).
Which shows you that governmental agencies are already weighing “lives saved” versus “climate costs”. In this case estimating that the health benefits of not killing 3–4 million people a year was worth more than the extra warming caused by reducing the amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere.
That’s what Dr. Hansen is disagreeing with. He thinks that there will be far more warming from the reduction in sulfur dioxide than the authors of this study anticipated.
SOx enhances the planetary albedo, it makes the Earth more reflective. "Dimming" is when the albedo becomes less reflective. Reductions in SOx cause the Earth to absorb more solar radiation because less is reflected back into space.
This is also happening "right now". Here’s the bad news: the Earth’s albedo has been declining during the last 20 years.
Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine pub. Aug 2021
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL094888
Earth observation satellites are constantly measuring the Earth’s albedo using a suite of sensors, and the reflectivity of the planet is measured through earthshine, the light from the Earth that reflects off the Moon. This paper analyzes earthshine measurements between 1998 and 2017 to see if the Earth’s albedo is rising or declining in response to climate change. Here’s their conclusion.
“We have reported a two-decade long data set of the Earth’s nearly globally averaged albedo as derived from earthshine observations. Stringent data quality standards were applied to generate monthly and annual means. These vary significantly on monthly, annual, and decadal scales with the net being a gradual decline over the two decades, which accelerated in the most recent years (much of the decrease in reflectance occurred during the last three years of the two-decade period the team studied). Remarkably, the inter-annual earthshine anomalies agree well with those from CERES satellite observations, despite their differences in global coverage, underlying assumptions to derive the albedo, and the very different sensitivities to retroflected and wider-angle reflected light.”
The two-decade decrease in earthshine-derived albedo corresponds to an increase in radiative forcing of about 0.5 W/m2, which is climatologically significant (Miller et al., 2014). For comparison, total anthropogenic forcing increased by about 0.6 W/m2 over the same period. The CERES data show an even stronger trend of decreasing global albedo over the most recent years, which has been associated to changes in the PDO, SSTs and low cloud formation changes. It is unclear whether these changes arise from the climate’s internal variability or are part of the feedback to external forcings.”
Notice that last paragraph. It quantifies how much of an effect this change in albedo is having. By 2017 it had reached 0.5 W/m2 (Watts per square meter). That doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that the effect of all our CO2 pollution in 2017 was 0.6 W/m2. Bottom line,
By 2017 the decline in the Earth’s albedo doubled the rate that the Earth was warming. We are warming up twice as fast as we were.
Now, 20 year studies by 2 separate teams using different methodologies reaching the same conclusion might not mean anything to you but that's the "gold standard" of science.
The Earth's Albedo has dimmed and more ENERGY is flowing into the Climate System.
This was such a clean well summarized easy to read article. 👏👏👏👏
I'm not interested in the blame game per se as nations are in different stages of their own evolutions but would also like to see this applied to say plastic pollution, hazardous waste, water pollution etc.......
Fine work that is very informative. A query on the per capita emissions problem. Granted it is problematic when considering CUMULATIVE emissions but is it not valid to at least do so when looking at the ANNUAL emissions data for a country when you know the population for that year.
?
Another fantastic post!
This is really interesting. Often we hear estimates of warming by 2100 or 2050; I wonder how the data would change if instead we calculated the net effect by 2100 of emissions up to today
If I'm reading correctly, all of this is calculating the warming contribution by country rather than the net warming contribution. Do you know why the authors chose to do that?
New research from eminent climate scientist Prof James Hansen and colleagues suggests a civilization killing event. This is based on current CO2 levels in the atmosphere, not on future emissions. ‘Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone – after slow feedbacks operate – is about 10°C.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474
Global warming in the pipeline
A relevant per capita metric would be cumulative adjusted GHGs divided by cumulative person-years since 1851. If we take the concept of carbon budget seriously, we can certainly imagine that each individual is born with a carbon budget per year per person, say 2 tons of CO2 eq per year per person. We can then figure out which country has exceeded its country carbon budget by the largest amount on per capita and aggregate terms.
Do the per country emissions include emissions generated offshore because corporates have shifted manufacture to low wage economies?
That there is no good way to geographically standardize this measurement should be cause for a serious pause in thought: what is the value in mapping cumulative contributions toward climate change? Presumably, such a project is rooted in a crude notion of "environmental justice," suggesting that the burden of addressing climate change today (and into the future) should be disproportionately assigned to members of global society based on the historical track record of where they find themselves living. But is this really justice? The vast majority of humanity (~98%) lives in the country in which they were born, so our national residence is not much of a choice. And for those two percent who have moved across borders, does their responsibility suddenly go up or down by migrating internationally? Can someone from China be absolved of their presumed climate guilt by moving to New Zealand? Does someone from El Salvador inherit historical climate guilt by moving to the United States?
We need measures that help us create actions now that can effectively move us toward a better and more sustainable future. Looking backwards like this harms that cause, rather than helps. There is a very good and basic rule in cartography and spatial analysis: if you cannot standardize the data across your geographical units of analysis, then you need new data or new geographical units. And it does not help much, either, that the geographic units used here have changed quite a bit during the nearly two centuries being analyzed.
Despite the thoughtful presentation, this is an example of "How to Lie with Maps" (hat tip to Mark Monmonier), and I will be using it as an example of how *not* to do Geography with my undergrads. Thank you, I guess, for the classroom-discussion fodder. But also thank you, sincerely, for the excellent work you and the Our World in Data team generally do. Your resources are invaluable, almost always as good examples that further our understanding of world geography, not bad examples to critique.
Oh, I think there is value in looking at cumulative emissions by country.
Another name for the Anthropocene is the Eurokleptocene. Because a handful of countries have gotten obscenely wealthy by using fossil fuels to power their industrial revolutions.
The US, British, and Europeans have "used up" about 80% of the Global Carbon budget that was available to use. Burning more will put everyone at peril.
Yet we want to DEMAND that China must solve their "carbon emissions" before we do anything. Do you have any idea what a bunch of a-holes America looks like to the rest of the world?
We are the guy who goes out to lunch with a group, orders 5 cocktails, lobster, steak, and dessert. Then wants to split the check evenly.
If there is no justice from America and the Europeans on this, the Global 80% who aren't WHITE will align with China and sanction the US.
Because WHITE America may not believe in Climate Change but the rest of the world isn't as willfully blind and as stupid.
You seem to hold a degree of irrational hatred for white people.
Not really, I do despise racists and fools though.
This implies that you must hate yourself.
How is contribution, eg. for Slovenia calculated, since we had been part of Yugoslavia before we became independent?
Also, would it be possible to calculte contribution per country area? Slovenia contributed only 0.0007 °C to total global warming, but how much is it only for our area, wich is 20271 sq km?
Look, if you want to see the IPCC charts on this, here is the start of my analysis.
Heat doesn't "just happen". --Where it’s coming from, and why that matters to all of us.
https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-06-heat-doesnt
The BIG STORY you are all missing is that the RATE of WARMING has changed dramatically upwards. The observable warming is only half the problem, the SPEED of the warming is what will crash all of our efforts for a sustainable future.
Do you know the current rate of Warming?
From 1975-2015 it was about 0.18C per decade. Do you know what is now?
GISS is saying 0.225C per decade. Hansen is saying 0.36C per decade.
From the amount of energy flow into the oceans since 2015, I would say Hansen is probably right.
We are out of time. We have to do a "crash translation" of the global energy system "right now".
That's what the Climate Scientists mean when they say it's "Now or Never".
“Now or Never” is not a scientifically sound statement. Alarmists have been saying that for over 10 years and it was obviously not true, but anyone who thinks that is not operating under the scientific method.
Yes, DOUBLING the RATE OF WARMING to 0.36C PER DECADE is going to be "just fine".
You do understand this means 2C of additional warming by 2080.
This rate of warming will crash global civilization. We will not be able to adjust in that time span without a global emergency being declared and a global effort made to control/manage it.
What the hell do you think the UN Secretary General means when he states the we are in a "Climate Crisis"?
There is no way that 1 more degree of warming in the next 50 years will crash civilization. It’s much more likely an asteroid impact, nuclear war or AI apocalypse will do it.
It's about FOOD you fool. We are about to have a 30-50% reduction in agricultural outputs globally. Do you ever take your head out of your butt and pay attention to what's happening in the "real world"?
When the UN talks about "multifocal agricultural output failures" they are saying that multiple breadbasket regions are about to have very bad years.
Why do you think China purchased so much grain in 2021?
They are sitting on 50% of the global grain reserves. Enough to feed their population for 18 months.
Xi and Putin have better Climate Models than we do because they never had Exxon and the fossil fuel industry throwing sand in the gears during the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
Recent records disgorged by Exxon in Senate investigations found that Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy’ starting in the 1970s. Harvard and Potsdam researchers analyzed Exxon’s predictive “skill scores,” or how their predictions matched what actually happened.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/
They found that Exxon scientists were producing climate research in the 70’s and 80’s with an average skill score of 75 percent.
In comparison, NASA scientist James Hansen, who famously presented his global warming predictions to Congress in 1988, had an average skill score of 66 percent.
Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better.
When Exxon said shit like this in the late 90’s.
“The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,”
— Exxon ad, addressing proposals in the late 1990s for the U.S. to join an international climate accord (like the Paris Accord) at the time.
THEY WERE LYING. THEY HAVE BEEN LYING TO US FOR DECADES.
With a couple degrees of warming vast areas of Siberia and Canada will expand arable land to a great degree and the melting glaciers will supply plenty of clean water. The increased CO2 in the atmosphere will improve most crop yields (only maize is unlikely to increase, but its water consumption will fall). The only threat to food supplies is the elimination of natural gas needed to produce fertilizer and diesel to run the agricultural equipment.
My, it must be nice in the fantasy world you live in. Do you do ANY research on these topics?
Any at all?
#1 Google Batagay Slump in Siberia. That's what "real" permafrost melt looks like. It turns into completely unusable badlands. Forget farming, you cannot even build on it. It's that unstable.
It will "eventually" be usable. In a few hundred years.
FYI: 65% of Russia is permafrost. Putin, knows that.
#2 Melting Glaciers (?)
I'm confused. Do you have any understanding of any subject?
The "Big 3" Glacial Deposits of water on Earth are Antarctica, Greenland, and the Tibetan Plateau (Google "third pole").
Now, glacial melt in Antarctica is not exactly useful. In fact, a new paper on the 29th warns that so much meltwater is coming off the continent, it is going to cause the Southern Oceans to stagnate.
Glacial melt in Greenland is also, not useful. Particularly now that we can see Greenland is an arpeligo and not a unified landmass.
So, are you thinking glacial melt is going to be useful in Asia?
You are wrong.
In an unexpected consequence of Global Warming. The melt of the Tibetan Glaciers is causing massive erosion and weathering of of rocks in their drainage channels. This is releasing arsenic onto the water supply of most of India.
In what the WHO has termed "the worst mass poisoning in history" the population of India is being poisoned by arsenic in their drinking water. As the glaciers melt this will get worse.
So, that Glacial Melt. Also, not useful.
You really need to read something scientific once in a while.