Incredibly, we’re on track to 0.5C above pre-industrial by around 2050

Paul Pallaghy, PhD

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4 min read

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Aug 28

Surprisingly, we’re on track to get down to around 0.5C above pre-industrial global temperature. Within around 30 years.

If you factor in the current, actual (hyper-)adoption rates of green tech. And of course we should, these are mainstream, non-fad roll-outs underway right now by both utilities and consumers.

This is incredible.

Because that represents essentially a trivial amount of global warming.

And nobody is talking about it.

Yes, on the way there, we’ll hit around 1.5C above baseline during the mid-2030s. And a CO2 concentration of around 450ppm, around 170ppm above the pre-industrial baseline.

But the big news is how fast we can ditch around half the extra CO2 after we stop making it.

A global rise by 2C avoided

At the rate of electrification today we’re likely to hit 80–90% carbon neutral by 2042, thus leading to actual temperature and concentration drops in those mid-2030s.

This time forecast is the implication of estimates by ReThinkX and Tesla for calculation of humanity’s energy usage consistent with our current transition rate to renewables.

Barring WW3 and asteroid collisions.

We’ll max at around 1.5C above baseline. And then head down to 0.5C by the 2050s-2070s depending on the level of carbon capture.

My estimates here are based on:

1. The safe assumption of roughly linear decreases in temperature per decrease in CO2 concentration towards baseline

2. Dissipation of atmospheric CO2 via three known natural mechanisms with different time scales (see below)

3. With and without moderate carbon capture efforts that will likely become economical in the 2030s

The previous pessimistic assessments were all out by large margins because none of them factored in ReThinkX’s predictions, 100% correct as it turned out, that renewables wouid become cheaper than fossil fuel energy sources, and that adoption would grow exponentially.