Let's hope you and Hansen are both wrong about 2027, otherwise it could be the hottest year on record.
And now for the good news, Science named the growth of renewables their Breakthrough for 2025. https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2025 . It will be the first year that world-wide renewable generation exceeds coal generation.
Favorite quote from the editorial, "China will have abundant amounts of renewable energy for data centers, with fossil fuels as a backup. Meanwhile, the US marches boldly backward toward the past."
I put together a few charts using Ember data and tools that expand on the Science “Breakthrough of the Year” claims (renewables surpassing coal globally, and China’s wind+solar capacity now exceeding total U.S. capacity, plus a China–U.S. generation comparison).
Thank you for your projection! I have a question about climate models in general. They look at the past and project. Whether paleo or recent decades averages. My question is, "Are the current Earth climate dynamics included or weighed heavily?" A lot has changed the last 50 years ( carbon sink to source and Earth dumming ) and maybe with the more recent changes should be weighted more?
Models simulate physical processes, and those do change in the future (e.g. some feedbacks are nonlinear in their response to warming). Its one of the reasons why some models have a high ECS even though their TCR is more modest. They generally represent our best estimate of current earth climate dynamics, and are always being improved (e.g. we are working on the next generation of models – CMIP7 – as we speak).
How much consensus is there on local/regional warming patterns in those global models? After all, what really hurts are the local spikes and lasting heat waves.
Thanks Zeke for your attention and reply. Times are a changin' and models have to keep up. I just hope we don't get to such a positive heat feedback loop that the models have to be updated much more frequently ( a sign that the anthropocene heat beast is bigger than we thought ).
All the attention goes to Global Mean Surface temperature, although the radiative imbalance is mostly heating the oceans, because that is where the accessible heat capacity is. Shouldn’t Ocean Heat Content get more attention? Since its rise is steady, predicting 2026 and 2027 is easy.
Well, yes, but GMST is relatively easily understood by "lay" people, while Global Heat Content may seem more abstract. GMST can easily be seen to rise with atmospheric CO2 on a decadal time scale. And only recently has there been global coverage of vertical ocean heat profiles (https://argo.ucsd.edu/). IMHO, GMST is a reasonable surrogate for GHC, and depending on context, may be more useful. YMMV!
Global means (surface temp or sea level rise) are not very useful to most people. All sea level is local (and →rates← of SLR on any stretch of coast varies), and the means don't capture those nasty tails in the distribution.
What's scary is the oceans can't hold that extra heat now without massive negative repercussions. It takes a ton of energy to increase .1C of the oceans' waters and Earth's climate is just one big heat engine. And, the heat goes on ( was that Sonny and Cher?)
Based on my analysis, the solution can be love for live—not an easy solution, unfortunately. The sooner people, especially those who try to have an influence, understand and share my thesis, the better, for they will redirect some of their focus on finding ways that foster that love for life. Of course, I might be wrong regarding my thesis. I don’t think I am, though.
Well, humans won't go extinct*, but we'd probably be rendered less damaging on an unfriendly planet.
_________________
*At a growing population of ~8.2 billion, we could lose 99.998% of the population and still have a viable gene pool to support us as a species. Isn't that reassuring?
Well, unless that gene pool consists of the tired sperm of a collection of pathological narcissist billionaires emerging from their doomsday bunkers to father a new master race on a harem of slave concubines... In which case, no, not particularly reassuring. I'd rather give raccoons their shot at evolving to become the dominant species. Or maybe red pandas! That would be cute...
Those little f*ckers will probably just bugger off back to their own planet, anyway.
They are sure as sh*t too damned smart to have evolved on this one... I mean, 9 f*cking brains, decentralised control, I'm not even sure they evolved... 🤔
Drawdawn ( Reflect wisely where you can as you drawdown. Drawdown needs help even if nations actually seriously attempt it. ) Draw new dawns with reflection and drawdown.
the more important caveat (not mentioned) is that James Hansen used a moderate el nino for 2027, while Hausfather assumes a moderately strong one. Bump Hansen's green dot up 0.1 for apples to apples comparison.
The precision of these models rocks, Zeke... but it's also terrifying.
You mention Pinatubo in 1992 as "significant unexpected cooling." That wasn't a mystery. It was mechanics. Sulfur dioxide reflecting solar radiation. A brute-force patch on the atmosphere.
We are forecasting 1.57°C or even 1.7°C for 2027. That isn't just a data point on a chart. For places like South Asia, that is a wet-bulb death sentence. The latency between these forecasts and a policy fix is where the body count starts.
So here is the thing... You have the cooling mechanism identified (Pinatubo). You have the warming forecast (El Niño). If 2027 hits that 1.7°C mark... do you think the conversation shifts from predicting the heat to blocking it manually? Or are we going to wait until a rogue actor breaks the taboo for us?
(My new serialized novel, The Man Who Blocked The Sun, follows a diabetic engineer who hacks the climate because the treaties are too slow. It'd mean the world to me if you'd join to follow the work.)
That's the nightmare variable, exactly. Junaid knows he isn't fixing the carbon cycle... he's just dimming the sun. The oceans still take the hit.
It comes down to triage. Acidification is a slow death, but wet-bulb heat is immediate. He decides to stop the patient from bleeding out today and let the next generation worry about the pH balance. It’s ugly math. But it was the only math he had left.
Almost all scientists believe in climate change. Use Celsius when writing for them. When writing for the average American, and especially for the average American that is still undecided about climate change, use Fahrenheit.
Let's hope you and Hansen are both wrong about 2027, otherwise it could be the hottest year on record.
And now for the good news, Science named the growth of renewables their Breakthrough for 2025. https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2025 . It will be the first year that world-wide renewable generation exceeds coal generation.
Favorite quote from the editorial, "China will have abundant amounts of renewable energy for data centers, with fossil fuels as a backup. Meanwhile, the US marches boldly backward toward the past."
And fortunately, electric vehicle purchases have only declined 1% in North America and are up in the rest of the world. https://www.businessinsider.com/ev-sales-global-north-america-decline-us-tesla-byd-china-2025-12
I put together a few charts using Ember data and tools that expand on the Science “Breakthrough of the Year” claims (renewables surpassing coal globally, and China’s wind+solar capacity now exceeding total U.S. capacity, plus a China–U.S. generation comparison).
If anyone is interested, I wrote a short post about it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/justdean/p/the-rise-of-renewables-two-milestones?r=empm0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Zeke,
Thank you for your projection! I have a question about climate models in general. They look at the past and project. Whether paleo or recent decades averages. My question is, "Are the current Earth climate dynamics included or weighed heavily?" A lot has changed the last 50 years ( carbon sink to source and Earth dumming ) and maybe with the more recent changes should be weighted more?
Models simulate physical processes, and those do change in the future (e.g. some feedbacks are nonlinear in their response to warming). Its one of the reasons why some models have a high ECS even though their TCR is more modest. They generally represent our best estimate of current earth climate dynamics, and are always being improved (e.g. we are working on the next generation of models – CMIP7 – as we speak).
How much consensus is there on local/regional warming patterns in those global models? After all, what really hurts are the local spikes and lasting heat waves.
Thanks Zeke for your attention and reply. Times are a changin' and models have to keep up. I just hope we don't get to such a positive heat feedback loop that the models have to be updated much more frequently ( a sign that the anthropocene heat beast is bigger than we thought ).
Good question, Jeff. But what's Earth "dumming"?
Lol.. meant "dimming"
Well, we have certainly experienced “dumming” in US politics and government in the past year.
My chicken bone forecast shows ~1.49 for 2026.
We didn't get a reading for 2027 because the chicken jumped off the X-ray table.
All the attention goes to Global Mean Surface temperature, although the radiative imbalance is mostly heating the oceans, because that is where the accessible heat capacity is. Shouldn’t Ocean Heat Content get more attention? Since its rise is steady, predicting 2026 and 2027 is easy.
Well, yes, but GMST is relatively easily understood by "lay" people, while Global Heat Content may seem more abstract. GMST can easily be seen to rise with atmospheric CO2 on a decadal time scale. And only recently has there been global coverage of vertical ocean heat profiles (https://argo.ucsd.edu/). IMHO, GMST is a reasonable surrogate for GHC, and depending on context, may be more useful. YMMV!
Global means (surface temp or sea level rise) are not very useful to most people. All sea level is local (and →rates← of SLR on any stretch of coast varies), and the means don't capture those nasty tails in the distribution.
What's scary is the oceans can't hold that extra heat now without massive negative repercussions. It takes a ton of energy to increase .1C of the oceans' waters and Earth's climate is just one big heat engine. And, the heat goes on ( was that Sonny and Cher?)
Sunny and Char.
They will be there at the sunken Mar a Lago Concert with the Trump dystopian sycophantic bands Inmax and the DoinTimes and Paco and the ApacoLips
And the solution is...
Collective decarbonization of national economies as rapidly as politically feasible.
Based on my analysis, the solution can be love for live—not an easy solution, unfortunately. The sooner people, especially those who try to have an influence, understand and share my thesis, the better, for they will redirect some of their focus on finding ways that foster that love for life. Of course, I might be wrong regarding my thesis. I don’t think I am, though.
https://iamlazaros.substack.com/p/love-for-life
Economic collapse and mass extinction?
Problem will then self-correct, hopefully, over a couple of centuries...
👀😭
Well, humans won't go extinct*, but we'd probably be rendered less damaging on an unfriendly planet.
_________________
*At a growing population of ~8.2 billion, we could lose 99.998% of the population and still have a viable gene pool to support us as a species. Isn't that reassuring?
Well, unless that gene pool consists of the tired sperm of a collection of pathological narcissist billionaires emerging from their doomsday bunkers to father a new master race on a harem of slave concubines... In which case, no, not particularly reassuring. I'd rather give raccoons their shot at evolving to become the dominant species. Or maybe red pandas! That would be cute...
Raccoons, being nocturnal, have a shot. I'm pulling for octopuses, myself.
Those little f*ckers will probably just bugger off back to their own planet, anyway.
They are sure as sh*t too damned smart to have evolved on this one... I mean, 9 f*cking brains, decentralised control, I'm not even sure they evolved... 🤔
Drawdawn ( Reflect wisely where you can as you drawdown. Drawdown needs help even if nations actually seriously attempt it. ) Draw new dawns with reflection and drawdown.
the more important caveat (not mentioned) is that James Hansen used a moderate el nino for 2027, while Hausfather assumes a moderately strong one. Bump Hansen's green dot up 0.1 for apples to apples comparison.
Do you call a strong el Nino an "el ninon" or an "el hombre"? Aways wondered.. no cat 5s here
Zeke Hausfather, You have been doing a great.
The precision of these models rocks, Zeke... but it's also terrifying.
You mention Pinatubo in 1992 as "significant unexpected cooling." That wasn't a mystery. It was mechanics. Sulfur dioxide reflecting solar radiation. A brute-force patch on the atmosphere.
We are forecasting 1.57°C or even 1.7°C for 2027. That isn't just a data point on a chart. For places like South Asia, that is a wet-bulb death sentence. The latency between these forecasts and a policy fix is where the body count starts.
So here is the thing... You have the cooling mechanism identified (Pinatubo). You have the warming forecast (El Niño). If 2027 hits that 1.7°C mark... do you think the conversation shifts from predicting the heat to blocking it manually? Or are we going to wait until a rogue actor breaks the taboo for us?
The first episode is live here... https://silentwitnessin.substack.com/p/file-001-the-thermodynamic-bluff?r=6r3orq
(My new serialized novel, The Man Who Blocked The Sun, follows a diabetic engineer who hacks the climate because the treaties are too slow. It'd mean the world to me if you'd join to follow the work.)
Does the novel address the increased ocean acidification that would occur if CO2 levels stayed high but temps dropped?
That's the nightmare variable, exactly. Junaid knows he isn't fixing the carbon cycle... he's just dimming the sun. The oceans still take the hit.
It comes down to triage. Acidification is a slow death, but wet-bulb heat is immediate. He decides to stop the patient from bleeding out today and let the next generation worry about the pH balance. It’s ugly math. But it was the only math he had left.
Notre planète contient tous les matériaux nécessaires à l'élaboration des solutions requises. Le problème est de trouver la volonté, la force.
Avez-vous déjà ·rencontré· notre espèce ?
Almost all scientists believe in climate change. Use Celsius when writing for them. When writing for the average American, and especially for the average American that is still undecided about climate change, use Fahrenheit.