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Glasgow Nov 16 (BUS): As world leaders and negotiators hail the Glasgow climate agreement as a fine compromise that keeps the key temperature limit alive, many scientists are wondering what planet these leaders are looking for.
The Associated Press (AP) reports, by analyzing the numbers they see an entirely different and warmer Earth.
“In the bigger picture I think, yes, we have a good plan to keep the 1.5 degree target within our means,” UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa told the Associated Press, referring to the overarching global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the conference host, approved the deal, describing it as a “clear roadmap that limits global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees”.
But many scientists are more skeptical. They say forget 1.5 degrees. The Earth is still on a trajectory beyond 2 degrees (3.6 F).
“The 1.5°C target was already on life support equipment before Glasgow and now it’s time to pronounce it dead,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheim told The Associated Press in an email on Sunday.
A few of the 13 scientists interviewed by the AP about the Treaty of Glasgow said they see enough progress to keep the 1.5°C maximum alive — however, there is some hope. But hardly.
Optimists point to several agreements emerging from Glasgow, including a deal between the US and China to work harder together to cut emissions this decade, as well as separate multi-state agreements targeting methane emissions and coal-fired power. After six years of failure, the market-based mechanism will begin to release carbon-reducing trade credits into the air.
The 1.5 degree mark is the strictest of two goals from the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement. United Nations officials and scientists consider it essential because a 2018 scientific report found significantly worse effects on the world beyond 1.5 degrees.
The world’s temperature has already warmed by 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the pre-industrial era, so this is really just over a few tenths of a degree. The United Nations has calculated that to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, countries would have to halve their emissions by 2030. Espinosa said emissions are now increasing, not declining, by about 14% since 2010.
German researcher Hans Otto Porttner said the Glasgow conference “done the work, but not enough progress”.
“Global warming will well exceed 2°C. This development threatens nature, human life, livelihoods and habitats as well as prosperity,” said Portner, who co-chairs one of the science reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on which the United Nations relies.
Instead of big changes in the bending of the temperature curve as the United Nations in Glasgow had hoped, they only got small adjustments, according to scientists who ran computer simulations.
“Coming out of Glasgow, we cut about 0.1°C of warming … to get a best estimate of 2.3°C of warming,” Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist and director of the Breakthrough Institute said in an email. Hausfather modeled the climate with colleagues at Carbon Brief.
Jon Sterman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said his climate reaction team analyzed some raw numbers after the Glasgow accord was announced and did not match the leaders’ optimism.
“There is no reasonable way to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 or even two degrees (degree) if coal is not phased out … and as quickly as possible, along with oil and gas,” he said.
On Saturday, India got a last-minute change to the agreement: Instead of “phasing out” coal and fossil fuel subsidies, subsidies will be “gradually reduced”. Many scientists said that regardless of what the deal says, coal needs to be ended, not just reduced, to reduce future warming.
“Reducing” will not slow down the adverse effects of climate change any more than “eliminate it,” former NASA chief scientist Walid Abdelatty, an environmental researcher at the University of Colorado, said in an email.
Before finalizing the agreement, the Climate Action Tracker, which also analyzes pledges to see how much warming they will lead, said pledges to cut emissions would result in a 2.4 degree rise.
Australian tracking scientist Bill Hare said the 1.5 was “balanced on a knife edge”.
Hare said one clause of the agreement – which calls for countries whose emissions reduction targets are not in line with the 1.5-degree or two-degree limit to come back with new, stronger targets by the end of next year – offers hope.
But US climate envoy John Kerry said Saturday night that the clause may not apply to the United States, the second-largest coal exporter and the largest in history, because the US target is too strong.
Jonathan Overbeck, a climate scientist and dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Environment, said the agreement provided “mitigating hope.” …we have an incomplete plan to work slower. “
“I went to (the conference) thinking 1.5°C was still alive, and it seems the world leaders didn’t have the backbone for that,” Overbeck said in an email.
Some progress has been made, said University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Whipples, one of the lead authors of the US National Climate Assessment. But the probability of reaching 1.5 degrees is much reduced, even to an almost impossible degree. Even being able to reach two degrees is less likely.”
But some scholars held out hope.
“For the first time, I can really see a potential path forward to limit warming to 1.5°C,” Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann said in an email. “But it will require that both (a) countries honor their existing commitments and (b) further escalate their existing commitments.”
Johann Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts and Research in Germany highlighted the “optimistic” scenario in which he and a few others see whether all countries that have promised net zero emissions by mid-century actually achieve the target – something most of them have not. .
In this case, the warming could be limited to 1.8 degrees or 1.9 degrees, Rockstrom said.
“This is important progress, but it is far from sufficient,” he said.
MI