Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

Those projections were never realistic. They were the optimistic "best case scenario" which the IPCC — a political org funded by fossil fuel dependent economies — touted as the "most likely" average, when it never held more than a 50/50 chance even if everything went to plan.

The whole 1.5 - 3c "likelihood" was dependent on major variables we don't actually control (like how much carbon the remaining forests absorb), and confounding variables (like feedback loops and major weather systems reversing/collapsing) were downgraded or completely ignored due to a horrific level of uncertainty/unknowability. In statistics, if you don't have real world data and can't analyze a variable with any reasonable degree of confidence, you tend to omit it entirely.

Most of the actual climate scientists have been saying we're on track for the worst case scenarios due to this and actual weather patterns (we've been hugging the upper limit of projected warming the entire time).

Disclaimer: I am not a climate scientist, there appears to be one in this thread, maybe he could comment, that being said:

Yep.

You are correct, that was the consensus a few years back.

Then, things kept getting worse than what that consensus would suggest.

In 2020, +2 to +4.5 C by 2100 was generally the consensus.

Heres an article in Nature from 2022.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16264-6

For each CMIP, two climate scenarios were considered: a middle-of-the-road scenario with effective GHG emission reductions, and a business-as-usual scenario with virtually no GHG emissions reductions. These scenarios correspond to SRES B1 and SRES A2 for CMIP334, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for CMIP517, and SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 for CMIP618, respectively.

Figure 1 shows that, for all CMIPs and scenarios, the observed warming generally fits well within the projected warming range, and closely follows the CMIPs median warming lines. The observed warming is usually closer to the upper level of the projected warming ranges. Considering the average warming for the whole future period, CMIP3 SRES B1 (SRES A2) average warming is 0.20 °C (0.17 °C) lower than the observed one, while for CMIP5 RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 the average warming is 0.07 °C and 0.06 °C lower than the observed one, respectively. CMIP6 SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 average warming is 0.17 °C (0.14 °C) lower than the observed one.

Thus, all CMIPs temperature projections up to 2020 are slightly conservative, particularly CMIP3. However, it should be noted that CMIP6 future period comprises only 6 years, which is relatively short to draw solid conclusions.

Emphasis mine.

Here's the older RCPs from the IPCC in 2013

Unfortunately I am on a shit tier phone and cannot pull data and compose/plot my own graphs comparing actual data with model projections... but uh yeah, its looking to me that actual real world temperatures are at best following basically the worst case model scenarios in the last few years... and might even be breaking out, upwardly, of the 95% confidence channels for even those, if something like +1.75C this January is not just some weird fluke, and is indicative of the trend of all of 2025.

That would mean we'd hit +2.0C by or before 2030, the graph goes exponential, hockeysticks, much, much more soon than the current consenus projection models.

Again to repeat that disclaimer: I am not an expert, but I am extremely concerned. The way I see it, following climate science related news for about 2 decades now, it seems to me there is a fairly well established tendency for the consensus to actually be too optimistic. Almost everyone keeps being surprised, almost year after year, by actual data, actual events being worse than consensus projections.

I almost died in the heat dome in the PNW a few years back. Am poor. Do not have AC. Have health conditions.

Spent 3 straight days, inside, with blackout curtains and reflective solar blankets up on the windows... it was over 90F-95F at night, up to 105-110F during the day.

I lost 10 pounds from sweating in 3 days.

Nothing like that had ever happenes before in recorded PNW history, and the knee jerk response at the time from almost every climate scientist that commented on it was 'well actually thats just a weird freak one time thing and we can't actually attribute it to global warming' ... and since then just all over the US, insane climate events keep happening regularly that 20 years ago would have been 'once in a life time.'

My strong, unprofessional suspicion is that we are literally cooked.