JP Morgan – Risky business – the climate and the macroeconomy – del 2

J.P. Morgan is the world’s largest financial backer of fossil fuel companies, helping to fund fracking, pipeline projects, and Arctic oil and gas exploration. The company has contributed $75 billion to such projects since the Paris climate agreement was forged in 2015. The agreement called on governments to reduce fossil fuel emissions to help limit global heating to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.

If activities like the ones funded by J.P. Morgan continue to release fossil fuels into the atmosphere, Murray and Mackie wrote, ”We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.”

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In the 800,000 years prior to the industrial revolution, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 oscillated in a range from 170ppm (parts per million) to 300ppm. This ebb and flow in CO2 emissions was mainly driven by volcanic activity and ocean fissures. Since the industrial revolution, CO2 concentrations have climbed dramatically to the current level of around 410ppm (Figure 1).This increase in CO2 concentrations reflects the burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation and transportation, industrialization, and changes in agriculture and land use (deforestation).

Notera tidsskalan. Mänskligheten började evolvera till nuvarande form för 200 – 100 kyr sedan och spred sig så sakta från Afrika vid 50 kyr sedan. (Detta är inga definitiva siffror, mer de som är vanliga.)

There has been a relatively close relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature over the last 800,000 years (Figure 2). 2 These long run estimates of CO2 concentrations and temperature are based on ice core data from Antarctica so they are not estimates of global conditions. But the impression is very strong. Over the last 800,000 years, through to the middle of the 19th century, as CO2 concentrations oscillated in a 170ppm to 300ppm range, the Antarctic temperature oscillated in a range from -3.5°C to +6.3°C (relative to the average temperature over the last 1000 years).

Jag vet att det finns de som inte inser växthusgasers (GHG) betydelse som klimatpåverkare. Man hävdar att deras andel är extremt liten och därmed betydelselös. GHG ökar mängden vattenånga i atmosfären så att den gör grovjobbet med IR-reflektion tillbaka mot Jorden. Hittills har systemet fungerat rätt hyfsat, det har höjt Jordens medeltemperatur med cirka 33°C, från -18°C till 15°C.

Footnote 1: Lüthi et al, High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present. Nature, Vol. 453, pp. 379-382, 15 May 2008.; Petit et al, Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica, Nature 399: 429-436.; C. D. Keeling et al, Exchanges of atmospheric CO2 and 13CO2 with the terrestrial biosphere and oceans from 1978 to 2000. I. Global aspects, SIO Reference Series, No. 01-06, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, 88 pages, 2001.

Footnote 2: Lüthi et al, High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present. Nature, Vol. 453, pp. 379-382, 15 May 2008; Friedrich, T. et al., Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for future greenhouse warming, Science Advances, Vol. 2, 2016