We Can’t Reverse Global Warming

By Garry Rogers @Garry_Rogers

Having read the research on the technology, achievements, and hopes for reversing global warming, I’m compelled to share my deeply pessimistic outlook on this way out of our climate-change dilemma.

First of all, we’re too late. The amount of CO2 we’ve pumped into the atmosphere is staggering, and its long residence time means we’re locked into warming for centuries to come. Even if we achieve net-zero emissions tomorrow (which we won’t), the planet will continue to warm (https://garryrogers.com/2024/07/18/long-atmospheric-residence-time-of-co2/).

What can we do to solve this problem? The scale of the challenge is mind-boggling. To meaningfully reverse warming, we’d need to remove several hundred billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere (Rubin et al. 2012). Current carbon capture technologies are woefully inadequate (Rosa et al. 2020, Lai et al. 2021)). They’re energy intensive, expensive, and nowhere near the scale required (Le Moullec 2012). Using them would be like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

Some pin their hopes on geoengineering solutions like solar radiation management. As someone familiar with the complexities of atmospheric chemistry, I can tell you these approaches are incredibly risky (Sovacool 2021, Robock et al. 2009). We could easily trigger unintended consequences that make our situation even worse (Adelman 2017). It’s not a silver bullet; it’s playing Russian roulette with the planet.

Space-based solutions? Forget it. The energy requirements and technological challenges of large-scale space-based interventions are beyond our current capabilities. It’s a pipe dream that distracts from the urgent action needed on Earth (Faiyetole 2018, Mills et al. 2006).

Politics plays a critical role in managing climate change. Herman Jr and Treverton (2009) discuss the political consequences of climate change. Howlett and Kemmerling (2017) link the literature on policy failure to climate change. Alibašić (2022) discusses the administrative and ethical considerations of climate resilience and the consequences of failure to prepare for climate change. McClanahan and Cinner (2012) confront the consequences of climate change. These and other works on the subject show that our normal political processes are incapable of dealing with a slow-moving disaster that has no clear beginning or indisputable consequences.

More than just politics, the slow reaction to climate change is a normal and predictable outcome of human social organization and inertia. This is not a subject I’ve studied, but its components are discussed in many reports. Munck af Rosenschöld et al. (2014) treat institutional inertia as the inability of institutions to plan timely responses to anthropogenic climate change. Boston and Lempp (2011) discuss the asymmetries of politics and science that increase the risk of dangerous climate change. Brulle and Norgaard (2019) conclude that social inertia on climate change is not an irrational or unexpected response, but the normal and expected functioning of existing social control mechanisms. Grubb et al. (1995) focus on the issues of timing climate change abatement responses. Harries and Penning-Rowsell (2011) analyze flood risk and climate change adaptation.

Our only genuine hope was to have started reducing CO2 production decades ago. We’ve squandered precious time, and now we’re facing the consequences. The inertia in the climate system means that even if we somehow halted all emissions today, we’re still in for significant warming.

The likelihood of successfully stopping global warming? It’s close to zero. We lack the global coordination, political will, and technological capabilities to tackle a problem of this magnitude (Keohane and Victor 2016).

So, what can we expect:

  1. Massive sea level rise that will redraw coastlines and displace hundreds of millions (Kulp and Strauss 2019).
  2. Extreme weather events that will devastate agriculture and infrastructure (Diffenbaugh et al. 2017).
  3. Ecosystem collapse on a scale not seen since the great extinctions (Trisos et al. 2020).
  4. Water scarcity and food insecurity leading to global conflict (Schmidhuber and Tubiello 2007).
  5. The collapse of human civilization (Xu et al. 2020).

We’ve set in motion changes that will reshape the Earth for millennia. Our failure to act decisively has all but guaranteed a future of immense suffering. We needed a mobilization on a scale never seen in human history, and we needed it years ago Doing it today would probably guarantee a recognizable version of our civilization survives. Given our track record, I’m not too hopeful.

Technology that produced global warming is inadequate for solving the problem. The only actual solution was prevention. The release of CO2 could have been curtailed by the end of the industrial revolution. But since it wasn’t, the Earth will become a very different, much more hostile planet. Our descendants, if they survive, will inherit a world we would scarcely recognize. And they will curse our generation for our shortsightedness and inaction.

This is the third post in my climate-change worst-case scenario series. I have to say that the stark reality described here is probably not our worst-case future, it is actually the future we can expect. It’s time we confront it head-on, rather than clinging to false hopes and half-measures. The greatest danger in human history is upon us. We need to accept the causes of our problem and do what we can to preserve a livable environment on our planet. In an upcoming post, I ask if there are any effective climate-change mitigation steps we can take.

References

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