Is There Hope and a World Warming at 1.5 Degrees Celsius
Photo Source NASA’s Earth Observatory | CC BY 2.0
The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded the finalization of a special report on the impact of a 1.5 degree Celsius global warming above preindustrial levels. Meeting in Incheon, South Korea (October 1-5), its three working groups of experts and government officials have huddled and jousted to strike a consensus on what will be necessary to restrict warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius when the globe is already up a degree. What will earth be like with this level of warmth and what will happen if we fail?
Two earlier versions (January and June 2018) of the report were depressing to frightening. They were made available for about a month for comment by experts and interested parties. The real problem is a narrow window because human activity in the world emits 40 billion tons of CO2 per year — about 90 times the emission from volcanoes. At some point, there will be enough in the atmosphere where the 1.5 degree rise will be a foregone conclusion. While guesswork to some extent, it appears we have about 12 years before we exhaust the ‘carbon budget’; if we accept a 2C rise the date is 2045.
The tone may have been softened in the second report, but there is ‘substantial’ certainty the 2 degrees C target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, once considered safe, would be dangerous for humanity. As the agreement also required governments to pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, the remit to IPCC was to prepare a report comparing the consequences of the two alternatives as well as the feasibility and effort required to limit the rise to the lower figure. The final report released on Oct 8, 2018 reviews 30,000 publications.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
