What Does "Drill, Baby, Drill" Look Like? 16.2F Increase In Global Average Temperatures

Most reputable climate scientists project a global environmental catastrophe (such as the irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet, for example, causing sea levels to rise on the order of 23 feet) if and when temperatures reach 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the mean temperature that existed at the start of the Industrial Revolution. We have already warmed the Earth approximately 1.7 degrees F. since that time. Utilizing current technologies (and with a nod towards profitability), extraction of currently known recoverable fossil-based fuels will warm the planet an additional 2.8 degrees F., or 4.5 degrees F., well beyond the "disaster" consensus.

Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago has now calculated how hot the world will get if we extract and use all of the available fossil fuels accessible (though not necessarily cost-efficiently), through current technology, including coal, shale and oil, rather than leave them in the ground. In an article written for the New York Times, Greenstone concludes:

[T]he use of all reserves and resources would lead to a total increase of 16.2 degrees. Today’s climate and planet would very likely be unrecognizable.

Greenstone is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and runs the Energy Policy Institute there. Greenstone's methodology tallied the projected temperature increase attributable to use of fossil fuels extracted from the ground thus far, coupling it with the projected capacity of carbon emission damage (global warming) that could be expected from digging up, drilling, fracking, and burning the world's current "accessible" fossil fuel reserves.

The 16.2 degree figure puts us in a world we can scarcely imagine. At four degrees rise, carbon vegetation sinks will no longer function, accelerating the warming dramatically. An increase of 12 degrees Fahrenheit would exceed what scientists term the "wet-bulb limit" for significant portions of the globe. The "wet-bulb" limit notes that human beings are essentially just organisms with skin trapping heat at levels of 98.6 degrees:

EDIT

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/08/1376484/-How-Hot-Can-It-Get-Here-s-How-Hot