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Global greenhouse gas emissions may peak this year and start falling. This would be an historic turning point, heralding the end of the fossil fuel era as coal, oil and gas are increasingly displaced by clean energy technologies.

Oh I do hope so!

We may STILL need geoengineering to actually drop the temperature—the inflection point, while hopeful, may not be enough to stop the Southern Ocean warming and the WAIS sliding into the sea causing 5 metres sea level rise.


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But we must do more than take our foot off the warming accelerator – we must slam on the brakes. To avoid the worst of the climate crisis, global emissions must roughly halve by 2030. The task is monumental but possible, and could not be more urgent. It’s not game over – it’s game on.

Geoengineering could help as could massive tree planting, measures like encouraging people to paint roofs white, develop white (? could cause massive glare) roads etc. Massive urban tree planting, help for those with massive trees in their garden (to remove branches hanging over roofs etc.)


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Our planet in peril Last year, Earth was the hottest it’s been since records began. The onset of El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean helped drive global temperatures to new heights. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found 2023 was 1.48°C warmer than the pre-industrial average. Warmer global temperatures in 2023 brought extreme events and disasters worldwide. They included deadly heatwaves in the northern hemisphere summer, devastating wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, and record-breaking rains in many places including Korea, South Africa and China. Last year was also the warmest on record for the world’s oceans. More than 90% of heat from global warming is stored in the world’s oceans. Ocean temperatures are a clear indicator of our warming planet, revealing a year-on-year increase and an acceleration in the rate of warming.

And the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the ocean basin. warming the fastest!


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This year may be hotter still. There is a reasonable chance 2024 will end with an average global temperature more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Governments have agreed, through the Paris Agreement, to work together to limit global warming to 1.5°C, because warming beyond this threshold poses enormous dangers for humanity. The agreement refers to long-term trends in temperature, not a single year. So breaching 1.5°C in 2024 would not mean the world has failed to meet the Paris target. However, on long-term trends we are on track to cross the 1.5°C limit in the early 2030s. As the planet warms, we are now at grave risk of crossing irreversible “tipping points” in Earth’s climate system – including the loss of polar ice sheets and associated sea-level rise, and the collapse of major ocean currents. These tipping points represent thresholds which, when crossed, will trigger abrupt and self-perpetuating changes to the world’s climate and oceans. They are threats of a magnitude never before faced by humanity – one-way doors we do not want to go through.

The major ocean overturning currents depend on meltwater sinking below sealevel starting the return trip of the global currents. With massive melting cold meltwater flows on TOP of warmer but saltier and so heavier seawater—the return trip of the overturning meridional (N–S) circulation is not made or is weak. This will cool the North Atlantic and heat up other parts of the globe.

https://theconversation.com/its-not-game-over-its-game-on-why-2024-is-an-inflection-point-for-the-climate-crisis-221497

Article by:

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Wesley Morgan Research Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University Wesley Morgan is a Senior Researcher with the Climate Council

I really hope we do see the inflexion point this year.

Heatwave warmings every year, growing closer and closer to major cities is not to be thought of!

I should get my solar panels this week (vertical blinds being installed today) then, prompted by a couple posts in technical, will see if I can get a heat pump to heat my water, saving money and energy.