Here are some scientific facts I accept. (re Climate Change) [View all]

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NOAA has just released its Annual Greenhouse Gas Index. It is an authoritative aggregation of all GHGs (CO2, CH4, N2O, CFC12, CFC11 and 15 minor GHGs) scaled for radiative forcing factors, and aggregated into a single number called CO2 equivalent or CO2e. This graph shows both the growth of CO2 alone and CO2e.



From this data we can derive the growth of the non-CO2 GHGs in ppm-equivalent, and compare the growth rate of those gases to the growth rate of CO2 itself. The results are "disturbing".

From 1979 to 2015:

• CO2 concentrations grew by 64 ppm, or 19%, at an average of 0.48% per year
  
• CO2e concentration grew by 39 ppm, or 86%, at an average of 1.75% per year

Over the last 35 years, non-CO2 GHG concentrations have grown 3.6 times faster than CO2 concentrations.

A linear trend indicates that CO2e concentrations could reach 560 ppm by 2040. That implies a catastrophic short-term global average temperature rise of +3°C.

One factor that might interfere with this march over the cliff (the only one, so far as I can tell) is the growing possibility of a global economic crash by 2025. So on the one hand we have the frying pan, on the other hand is the fire.