"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (towards the end of this century), which would have devastating consequences for the planet," Fatih Birol, IEA's chief economist told Reuters.This now make sense. Using the same chart I gave earlier, projecting using the linear trend from 1950-2012 [the slope of the log of emissions, in GtC, is 0.0098] out to 2100, cumulative emissions in 2100 would be 4,000 GtC, for a warming of 6.1°C (11°F).
[Note, though, that the simple carbon-climate response function does not hold above 2000 GtC.]
However, that would mean 2100 emissions are about 90 GtC, or 330 Gt CO2 -- over 10 times today's. Is that conceivable? If world population then is 10 billion people, per-capita emissions would be 33 Gt CO2 per year -- twice what current US per-capita emissions are.
That strikes me as unlikely, though perhaps no inconceivable. But if humans are really so stupid as to not take some drastic action by at least 2050, when total warming would be 3.0°C -- if even after that we continue to burn fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate, well then we are clearly too stupid to deserve to continue as a species, and the Universe would best be rid of us.
(Unfortunately we would take a lot of other species down with us. (I don't suppose "we're sorry" would help much?) But some species will survive -- extremophiles, if no one else -- and they'd get a chance to start over.)
Eli and others: I still fault Romm for extremism, such as originally passing the 11 F story on without questioning it. [His "Update" came after -- note that he altered the post's title from its original.] But, I was not able to keep up with all the comments as they came in on my post. Sorry for falling behind.