How far does Flannery bringing timescale forward?

Question

The western, or any other, civilisation never was going to get through GW in one piece.

How does the revised ppm level effect the timescale for GW causing significant problems for western economies? or to put it another way, If someone in a western society wanted to get off the planet or tuck themselves out of the way before the western economies crumble under the weight of global warming, how long would they have?

Back of an envelope calculations only please.

Answer 1

I don't know enough climate science to perform an accurate calculation, just ballpark estimates.

The prior estimate was that we needed to reduce our emissions by about 80% by the year 2050. As we've increased our greenhouse gas emissions since that estimate, my guess is that we now need to reduce them by that amount perhaps by the year 2040. Basically we need to start reducing them immediately and significantly.

Of course, this is all an attempt to keep the temperature increase below about 3°C, which is the theoretical tipping point at which various feedbacks will begin to kick in, and it will become virtually impossible to slow global warming. Hopefully this tipping point will actually be at a somewhat higher temperature to give us a chance to avoid it.

*edit* Jello, I stated exactly why those numbers have been chosen. Open your eyes and your mind.

Answer 2

It is not possible to give a credible answer to your question. However, it is possible to state that there is no way for anyone to "tuck themselves out of the way" of the western economies collapsing (which they might do regardless of the consequences of climate change). Over a time horizon of say 75 years, how would you propose to live completely "off the grid," with no outside help? Where would you go that you would have enough resources under your direct control and that would be safe from outside aggression that this would be possible?

The idea that there will be pockets of "lifeboats" where one can ride out widespread social upheaval and still maintain anything resembling a modern lifestyle is nonsense. As Red Green says, we're all in this together.

Keep your stick on the ice.

Answer 3

This is one of the things that's actually still uncertain.

The reason is feedbacks, positive (example: reflective ice melts, exposes dark water/land, warming increases) and negative (the only example I know is creation of specific clouds. Other clouds are a positive feedback). There's not enough data about those.

We can still get through this in one piece. Here's the plan:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,481085,00.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

Answer 4

After the next elections In the US, We will be buying carbon credits off of third world countries to keep the lights on

Answer 5

Why 400ppm? Why 2050? Is it because these are nice round numbers?

Clearly these are just guesses. No one has any clue if in 5 years what the climate will be. For all anyone knows the sun could cool off, a volcano could blow and in 5 years we could be 30 degrees cooler than today.

Global warming is just BS.