More evidence that Hansen is right: Global warming will be more extreme than mainstream climatologists expect

As I explained before, there’s a dispute among climatologists about how much warming it actually causes when you double CO2 in the atmosphere. The consensus settled around 3 degree Celsius, but a group featuring Hansen most prominently, suggest that the warming is actually more than 4 degree Celsius.

The models are now increasingly suggesting more than 4 degree too (which the moderates refer to as the “hot model problem”), although those models are not being fully included by the IPCC process, they’re being treated as unrealistic.

Well, there’s more evidence coming in that the “alarmists” are the ones who are right. The last time we had CO2 at current concentrations was during the Pliocene. Not every part of the world has been equally well-studied to find out the temperature during that era, particularly the tropics on land were simply assumed to have a particular temperature. But it turns out, when you actually measure what was going on, things were a lot hotter than expected.

I quote:

“Most of what we know about past temperature comes from the oceans or terrestrial high latitudes, and there has been a lot of theoretical work in recent years on how low-latitude ocean temperatures relate to the land,” said lead author Lina Pérez-Ángel, a senior researcher at Brown.

“I think the big takeaway here is that we found significantly more warming on land in this region than you would expect from theory.”

In simple terms, theory often predicts that land heat in the tropics should rise by about 1.4°C (2.5°F) for every 1°C (1.8°F) of sea-surface warming in the tropics.

But the Bogotá Basin record points to a much stronger land response, close to twice what the tropical oceans show for the same broad transition.

[…]

If the Pliocene is any guide, the tropics could be facing stronger-than-expected heat as greenhouse gas levels continue to rise.

It matters, because climate moderates like Michael Mann and Zeke Hausfather base their estimate on what we saw during the Pliocene and they insist that based on the Pliocene you end up with ~3 degree per doubling (see here). But that argument is now falling apart, as we discover that the Pliocene was much hotter in the tropics on land than previously assumed.

It really seems like 3 degree of warming is just climate scientists being overly optimistic and reality being closer to 4.8 degree Celsius per doubling.

It’s the difference between a catastrophe and the apocalypse. Politicians still think of climate change as just another problem to manage, but it’s increasingly obvious that this is actually something that will result in billions of deaths during this century because of our failure to address it in a timely manner.

My recommendation is to avoid having children, as they would face something truly horrifying.

Unfortunately, none of this really means anything to most people, except for the people who study it for a living and a handful of autists and doomers. But again, the reality is just that particularly in the tropics, it’s now clear that we’re faced with apocalyptic warming.