Honing the Numbers - The Future, Not So Cool But Not So Hot Either.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has revised the range of global heating outcomes at both ends. The best outcome may be worse than we had been told but the worst outcome should be not as bad. There, don't you feel better?

The old range, introduced before anyone can remember, went from 1.5 degrees Celsius to 4.5 C.  Now the best outcome is 2.6 C and the worst has been lowered to 3.9 C.

The really bad part of this is that almost no one knows what those numbers mean. The truth is that those numbers, high or low, will mean different things to different people in different places. Remember, those are global averages. Let's take the 2.6 C prediction. Some places will experience much less than 2.6 degrees Celsius of heating. Latitude has a big role in the variation. So too does proximity to oceans. Even rainfall patterns bear on the outcome. But if some places will be cooler than average, others will be much hotter than average.

Then there's the question of resilience. How much climate change can you take? How much can you afford? If that sounds facetious then consider the heatwaves endured in Paris since 2003. Thousands died. Those lovely old, postage-stamp apartments with their narrow staircases and lousy ventilation were ovens for their elderly tenants with next to zero options.  If you had a villa out of town with central air and a lovely swimming pool your mortality rate was probably a bit lower.

Some societies are more resilient than others. Some neighbourhoods are more resilient than others. Just ask the population of east L.A.

Over the past decade climate scientists have developed a theory of a climate phenomenon not considered by the IPCC - "climate departure."  Think of it as going from "bake" to "broil."  Once departure arrives there'll be no cool years as we understand the term.  Every year, post-departure will be warmer than the warmest year pre-departure. Climate departure is predicted to debut in the equatorial/tropical latitudes in the next three to four years.  It will gradually spread poleward into the temperate regions by mid-century.  It's a relative thing. The north won't get as hot as Central America. It'll be hot by northern standards not tropical standards.

The other caution about the IPCC numbers is that the panel has a record of "getting it wrong." From its inception the UN panel has underestimated the pace and severity of global heating. Change they predicted might occur by the end of the century are already happening.  It's the way the panel is constituted that it only produces consensus reports meaning that holdouts can and do put their thumb on the scales. And it focuses on man-made or anthropogenic global warming. The idea at the outset was to curb man-made greenhouse gas emissions to stay well clear of triggering natural feedback loops, natural global warming a.k.a. runaway global warming. Only we've already awakened the beast. We have triggered those natural feedback loops, not all but most, and natural processes have joined humanity in releasing powerful greenhouse gases once safely sequestered in the tundra, the underlying permafrost and seabed and lakebed ice formations called clathrates. That stuff is going and we have no way of arresting it.

This Just In - the first release of seabed methane has been discovered in the Antarctic.

We must slash our man-made emissions as rapidly as possible. That is a non-starter in petro-states such as Canada or Saudi-Arabia, the Gulf states, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela and such. They're exploring for and discovering new fields of oil and gas every day. You gotta give them credit - they're not quitters.

Anyway, my point is the new IPCC numbers are nice but they're really not helpful because they're woefully out of context and, as such, more apt to mislead than inform.