Trust the Science...? 1.5 by 2029

Yes, actually. But this is why Climate Change is a Wicked Problem.

Welcome back to Wicked Problems. Trick or Treat? Treats are on hold. Instead you just got hit in the face with an egg and a flour sock.¹

On Sunday we braced you this would be a big week for “holy shit” moments on climate science. We thought it would come from the well-signalled paper from James Hansen et al in Oxford Open Climate Change (still not out), suggesting that the main climate models showing a narrow and closing path to “keep 1.5 alive” from the IEA and IPCC are way off - in large part because of the under-appreciated role of aerosols (in particular sulfur dioxide released along with CO2 in emissions) in preventing sunlight from warming the earth.

Instead we got sucker punched by Robin Lamboll of Imperial College London and Chris Smith at U of Leeds, et al, in Nature Climate Change. Until their calculations, the prevailing view was that we had enough carbon runway (or budget - but as so many of you in startupland appreciate, runway has a bit more urgency) to land at 1.5 C, just…