When do we break 2°C?
A response to the Guardian
The Guardian recently published the article with the title Global temperatures could break heat record in next five years (5/28/2025) and subtitle that states Data also shows small but ‘shocking’ likelihood of year 2C hotter than preindustrial era before 2030. Here is the second paragraph:
For the first time, the data also indicated a small likelihood that before 2030, the world could experience a year that is 2C hotter than the preindustrial era, a possibility scientists described as “shocking”.
While there are no factual inaccuracies in this article, the information presented is not particularly surprising nor enlightening. The term "shocking" specifically refers to the event occurring before 2030. Would it matter much if we broke 2°C in, say, 2031? Nope. And when they say “small,” you have to read the article to see that they give breaking 2°C by 2030 as a 1%.
My main issue is that the article lacks the appropriate graph to truly help the reader understand the projections, which you would recognize if you have been reading regularly. Figure 1 displays the monthly global temperature anomalies categorized by ENSO status, which I update every month in QTRS, but this time the quadratic fits extended to the year 2050. What should we expect?
Will we break 1.5°C? First note that not all agencies say we broke that mark in 2024; NOAA says we were just shy, but now we are quibbling about tenths of a degree. Either way, the next El Niño event will in all likelihood put us above 1.5°C for several months. The only question is when that happens, and it certainly could happen in the next five years. The article notes, “It also reported an 86% likelihood that 1.5°C would be passed in at least one of the next five years, up from 40% in the 2020 report.” What the report basically means is that there is an 86% chance of El Niño occurring in the next five years. The author is really missing the important detail of ENSO.
When do we start to stay above 1.5°C? A neutral ENSO will get us there by around 2035, and even La Niña years will stay above it by around 2040. Depending on the ENSO cycle, we could consistently be above 1.5°C in approximately 10 years.
What about above 2°C? By 2040, El Niño events are expected to result in periods where temperatures exceed 2°C, and given that El Niño tends to run well above the red curve, we can do 2°C by around 2035.
It is important to note that I’m using basic curve fitting here. Certainly, time does not drive temperature increases; however, curve fitting yields good results as long as the underlying driving forces, such as burning fossil fuels, remain unchanged. The science is important for increased accuracy and a deeper understanding of warming, but the graph in Figure 1 explains more than enough for the average person to understand the predictions. I’m not sure the author of the Guardian article knows this much.
Here is one more fun quote from the article (bold mine):
Coming after the hottest 10 years ever measured, the latest medium-term global climate update highlights the growing threat to human health, national economies and natural landscapes unless people stop burning oil, gas, coal and trees.
How about we add this to the last sentence: which is highly unlikely to happen for numerous reasons. Some folks need to stop pretending this has any chance of happening.
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Bio
I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD in Math: Stochastic Processes, MS in Applied Statistics, MS in Math, BS in Math, BS in Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations.
# The Economics of Climate Resilience: Why Prosperity Trumps Doom
As I have discussed previously, I remain exceptionally optimistic about renewables driving global economic growth upward. Making more money will make it considerably easier to deal with whatever climate change throws at us. The best climate adaptation strategy is simply having more wealth.
If global economic growth increases from the 3 percent we maintain today to 4.5 percent, the world will be 30 times richer rather than merely 9 times richer by 2100. The mathematics of compound growth makes this difference extraordinary—an additional 1.5 percentage points annually transforms civilizational wealth over the span of a human lifetime.
I expect global carbon emissions will stagnate in the coming years—it probably has this year already—but it will not fall dramatically as many environmentalists hope. Emissions will decline gently through the 2030s and 2040s, achieving around 30 percent reduction from current levels. The relative decline in coal and oil demand will be offset by higher demand for metallurgical coal for steel and cement production, plus increased natural gas consumption for renewables firming and other energy-intensive industrial applications.
Most credible analysts predict we will manage to limit warming to less than 3 degrees, possibly between 2.3-2.7 degrees. In this scenario, the greatest threat to human civilization lies in climate disruption to agriculture.
We have obviously made remarkable progress in agriculture over the past century. Agricultural land use actually peaked in the 1990s and has remained stable since. The way to mitigate climate change's impact on food prices is more neoliberalism, which I have detailed in previous note - https://substack.com/@mdnadimahmed888222/note/c-122251627?r=o2bbq.
I remain very optimistic about laboratory-grown meat—not as enthusiastic as industry participants themselves, but far more than most observers. My prediction since 2017-2018 has been that the technology will scale and disrupt most protein markets by the mid-2040s.
The trajectory thus far appears promising. Laboratory-grown chicken used to cost approximately $200,000-300,000 per nugget. Current estimates place the cost below $100. Yes, that remains prohibitively expensive, but this represents the fastest price decline of any technology I have witnessed.
Unlike solar and wind energy, laboratory-grown meat has not yet received substantial government support. This technology will not only dramatically reduce agricultural emissions but also insulate our food prices from climate shocks. As long as humanity can secure affordable bacon and eggs for breakfast, we can face any challenge.