See Guardian article of 29 May, by Fiona Harvey.  

Quotes: Faith Birol .. 'I am very worried.  This is the worst news on emissions.'

John Chapman,  Brisbane Australia 

I drafted up a post on this:

IEA CO2 Emissions Update 2010 - Bad News

By the way, this is one which would be good to get published quickly, because there hasn't been a lot of reporting about it yet.  It could generate a pretty good number of page hits for SkS if we get it out soon, so I'd like to publish it tomorrow.  Thus quick reviews would be appreciated.  We should also try to get this in TreeHugger.

Hi Dana,

I agree about expediting this-- we need to be aggressive and pro-active rather than responding to some spin by the deniers.

Quick read, so I may have missed this.  But two questions:

1)  Has this increase in GHG emissions from 'accounting' records been reflected in a commensurate increase the inter-annual CO2 increases yet?

2)  Do anthro GHGs explain all of the the observed increase in CO2 levels?  If not, is there accounting for CO2 emissions arising from feedbacks?

What I am trying to get at is there any indication yet of a positive feedback in GHGs in response to the warming, whether it be methane or CO2?  Anyhow, they might be silly questions, if so...feel free to ignore.

All the links before fig. 2 need to be fixed
After fig.3, you quote warming above pre-industrial level, while fig. 3 show warming relative to 50-80 (I guess); it might be confusing.

Dana,

Another thought.  We tend to get very focussed on doubling CO2.  Well, it is now probably prudent to start seriously considering that we might even succeed in trebling CO2 id we keep on at it like this.  Maybe that point needs to be made in your post--again I may have missed it, I'm multi-tasking big time today!.  I know Joe Romm has some MIT study and I think the Met Office too about us more than doubling CO2. 

Alby - I don't know the answers to your first two questions.  The IEA and EIA data just account for anthropogenic CO2 emissions.  It would take some work to look at total atmospheric CO2 increase and compare it to anthropogenic emissions.  Could be the subject of another post, but a bit off-track here.  I'll mention that we're headed towards a tripling of CO2 in these worst case scenarios, sometime next century.  I'll see if I can find a post to reference regarding the consequences of such high CO2 levels.

Riccardo - thanks, I thought I'd fixed those links, but those zombies are hard to kill!  Good point about Figure 3 (compares to 2000 temps), I'll clarify that.

No worries Dana...don;t want to side track you.

I Googled and found this MIT study.  That post also links to a Hadley centre/Met Office  study, which has this neat graphic:

Yeah I just linked to one of the posts with that graphic.  I'm trying to decide if it would be worth including the figure itself in this post.  It is a good illustration - right now we're on the orange or red arrows, already having passed the blue.  I think I'll put it in - it's a helpful illustration.  It's getting kind of graphics-heavy for TreeHugger though.

Just saw that this report has made it onto the front page of BBC web site.

Good, the more media attention it gets, the better.

I added the Met Office arrows figure and mentioned that it's hard to exaggerate how bad tripling CO2 would be, with a few CP links.

Thanks Dana...now I really ought to get back to business :)

Isn't it A1FI (FI = fosil intensive ?) - not A1F1 - seems mixed up at IPCC as well

- If we return back up to Scenario A1FI

As I mentioned briefly on the "General Chat" on this same point, I'm not sure that this 2010 emissions update is so much a surprise as it is a "disappointment".

I think the real significant takeaway are the implied consequences of not yet turning the corner on emissions growth (let alone peaking and decline.)

I rather like Figure 22 from the Copenhagen Diagnosis. This fits well with the Allen et al and Meinhausen et al approaches, and highlights the fact that delay now means steeper cuts later for a given cumulative emission target / temperature guardrail. As they quote in the linked report: "An important consequence of the rapidly growing emissions rate, and the need for a limited emissions budget, is that any delay in reaching the peak emissions drastically increases the required rapidity and depth of future emissions cuts."

Frankly, those emission reduction curves obscure much faster rates that will be required of certain parts of the economy, but that's stark enough for present purposes.

By the way, just further to my point above. The whole "area under the curve" concept might be worth a separate post, with the IEA 2010 emission growth as a "teachable" moment. Maybe the title could be - as John Schellnhuber refers to them as - "Vicious Integrals".

The papers could probably be Allen et al (2009), Meinhausen et al (2009), Anderson and Bows (2011), WGBU 2009 and then maybe the 2008 to 2010 experience as an example of the fork in the road we are facing, and what that the consequences of the curve bending back up might be.

I am a bit late as a contributor, so if this has already been done, great. If not, perhaps I can give it a go later this week.

Looks good brutha!. Those global mean temperature projections sure are misleading though, over the ocean it will be cooler, but temperatures over the continental masses are going to be huge! People truly do not comprehend the shitstorm coming do they?

Oh, and a thumbs up as is!

Shhh! Don't tell anyone that IPCC screwed up (79 times according to google). A1FI is used 1440 times btw.

The Melbourne Age Newspaper went with this as their front page lead today.

Quite the sudden turn of events - John got word that ABC Drum was looking for an article on this news, and he sent them this post, and they liked it but want to add some details about consequences of 3-4°C warming (and want an academic author).  So we're going to start with what I've got, but I'm going to collaborate with John Abraham to add some details on impacts of 3-4°C warming.  So this one's off the schedule for now, but the Drum is looking for something pretty quick, so we'll publish later in the week.

Academic author?, but any old climate crank can write shit in the MSM? Rather flexible standards in the media.

How? By the SkS team collectively writing timely posts and also by building more relationships with media outlets. Crowd sourcing the writing is going very nicely at the moment. How to develop the media side, I'm not sure, but ideally best if it isn't just through me.

So the ABC won't have an op-ed, in a week or so, arguing against this? That's what I was getting at. Having said that I don't really read much MSM stuff now, so maybe ABC are raising the bar. 

As far as Dana writing alongside John Abraham, awesome dude!, didn't mean to rain on your parade.

Thanks Rob.  Yeah it was a very nice set of coincidences that set it up, but we put ourselves in the position to allow the circumstances to happen (timely posting of the IEA data, timely writing of the article, timely internal review of the article).

John Abraham sent me some suggestions regarding consequences I could incorporate in the article from the IPCC SPM, so I'll probably do that soon and have a new draft up for review shortly.

Coincidentally (not), the following news from NOAA via the Guardian  today. http://t.co/mfKCWj2

Carbon levels hit new peak, research shows

Preliminary data from the US government shows that carbon dioxide levels peaked last week at the highest levels on record

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have reached a new peak despite the economic recession in western countries and assurances from politicians that they intend to cut emissions, new research has shown.

Preliminary data from the US government's Earth Systems Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, where measurements of CO2 have been continuously monitored for almost 50 years, show that 2011 CO2 levels peaked last week at 394.97ppm. This is an increase of nearly 1.6ppm on last year and the highest ever recorded.

Okay the post is updated if anybody would like to take another gander.  Not too much changed really, just trimmed it down a bit and added some impacts from the IPCC report.

Until I read this article, I had thought my own effort (CO2 – Some facts figures and outcomes) bordered on being “alarmist”.  However having just read CO2 Emissions Update, I would say it is very aptly titled – Bad News.  It makes my article look respectable.  Perhaps both should be published on the same day?  CO2 Emissions Update is undoubtedly the better article, though I think both are complimentary

The editor of The Conversation who's going to publish the article told me:

"Despite your calm tone, this article is making my skin crawl. Which I guess is a good thing."

There was a comment in Critical Decade Part 2 that said some people were claiming the report was alarmist, but he didn't agree.  My response was that people (deniers) tend to confuse "alarmist" with "alarming".  Reality is alarming right now.  People don't like to be alarmed, so they tend to deny the problem, and accuse those of us communicating it of being "alarmist" for correctly raising the alarm.  As John says, all we have to do is let the facts speak for themselves.

Agnostic - that's a good idea.  We'll see how the schedule pans out, because I'm not totally sure when The Conversation is going to publish this article.  If possible we'll try do post yours back-to-back with this one.

Very good, as usual. It's terrifying enough but when you consider that the IPCC models don't consider likely longer-scale feedbacks and changes in the airborne fraction, it just gets worse.

Your "calm tone" kinda reminds me of HAL in 2001...

Sorry, if I have been misunderstood.  What I meant was that I thought my article was getting close to being unreasonably alarming but that the facts provided by IEA CO2 Emissions Update now showed my views not unreasonable. 

I did not in any way intend to cast aspersions on Dana’s work which, as I have said, is far superior to my own and factual – which makes it all the more disturbing.  

Equally disturbing is that of the major emitters only the UK has indicated an intention of reducing their current emission levels.  We face a very bleak future without action from them.

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid your planet is going to burn.

Agnostic - no need to apologize, we understood what you were saying :-)

I think the article might be published today, but no word yet.

Actually here’s what the Met Office concluded:

“Using these GCM projections along with simple climate-model projections, including uncertainties in carbon-cycle feedbacks, and also comparing against other model projections from the IPCC, our best estimate is that the A1FI emissions scenario would lead to a warming of 4°C relative to pre-industrial during the 2070s. If carbon-cycle feedbacks are stronger, which appears less likely but still credible, then 4°C warming could be reached by the early 2060s in projections that are consistent with the IPCC’s ‘likely range’.”

In other words, when you take carbon-cycle feedbacks into account the true worst-case scenario is 4°C global warming not in 90 years but in 50 years. I know I keep harping on slow feedbacks, but I do think they are very important and should be getting a lot more attention.

@Rob “So the ABC won't have an op-ed, in a week or so, arguing against this?”

Knowing the ABC, unfortunately that is exactly what they will do. The constant accusations of left-wing bias are an inversion of reality – their opinion pages are full of far-right, denialist tripe.

That's not terribly different from the IPCC, which has 4°C warming between 2000 and 2100 in A1FI (thus 4.7°C above pre-industrial).  Certainly worse, but the IPCC scenario is practically catastrophic already anyway.

The Conversation published the piece, so I'm going to post it here too.  We can do Agnostic's tonight.  Not sure if the Drum is giong to publish it too.