Seth Borenstein
Thu, October 24, 2024
The Associated Press
The world is on a path to get 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, but could trim half a degree of that projected future heating if countries do everything they promise to fight climate change, a United Nations report said Thursday.
But it still won't be near enough to curb warming's worst impacts such as nastier heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts, the report said.
Under every scenario but the “most optimistic” with the biggest cuts in fossil fuels burning, the chance of curbing warming so it stays within the internationally agreed-upon limit "would be virtually zero," the United Nations Environment Programme's annual Emissions Gap Report said. The goal, set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, is to limit human-caused warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The report said that since the mid-1800s, the world has already heated up by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit), up from previous estimates of 1.1 or 1.2 degrees because it includes the record heat last year.
Instead the world is on pace to hit 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. But if nations somehow do all of what they promised in targets they submitted to the United Nations that warming could be limited to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the report said.
In that super-stringent cuts scenario where nations have zero net carbon emissions after mid-century, there's a 23% chance of keeping warming at or below the 1.5 degrees goal. It's far more likely that even that optimistic scenario will keep warming to 1.9 degrees above pre-industrial times, the report said.
“The main message is that action right now and right here before 2030 is critical if we want to lower the temperature,” said report main editor Anne Olhoff, an economist and chief climate advisor to the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre. “It is now or never really if we want to keep 1.5 alive.”
Without swift and dramatic emission cuts “on a scale and pace never seen before,” UNEP Director Inger Andersen said “the 1.5 degree C goal will soon be dead and (the less stringent Paris goal of) well below 2 degrees C will take its place in the intensive care unit.”
Olhoff said Earth's on a trajectory to slam the door on 1.5 sometime in 2029.
“Winning slowly is the same as losing when it comes to climate change,” said author Neil Grant of Climate Analytics. “And so I think we are at risk of a lost decade.”
One of the problems is that even though nations pledged climate action in their targets submitted as part of the Paris Agreement, there's a big gap between what they said they will do and what they are doing based on their existing policies, report authors said.
The world's 20 richest countries — which are responsible for 77% of the carbon pollution in the air — are falling short of their stated emission-cutting goals, with only 11 meeting their individual targets, the report said.
Emission cuts strong enough to limit warming to the 1.5 degree goal are more than technically and economically possible, the report found. They just aren't being proposed or done.
The report ”shows that yet again governments are sleepwalking towards climate chaos," said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, who wasn't part of the report.
Another outside scientist, Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the report confirms his worst concerns: “We are not making progress and are now following a 3.1 degree path, which is, with next to zero uncertainty, a path to disaster."
Both the 3.1 degree and 2.6 degree calculations are a tenth of a degree Celsius warmer than last year’s version of the UN report, which experts said is within the margin of uncertainty.
Mostly the problem is “there's one year less time to cut emissions and avoid climate catastrophe,” said MIT's John Sterman, who models different warming scenarios based on emissions and countries policies. “Catastrophe is a strong word and I don't use it lightly,” he said, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report saying 3 degrees of warming would trigger severe and irreversible damage.
The report focuses on what's called an emissions gap. It calculates a budget of how many billions of tons of greenhouse gases — mostly carbon dioxide and methane — the world can spew and stay under 1.5 degrees, 1.8 degrees and 2 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times. It then figures how much annual emissions have to be slashed by 2030 to keep at those levels.
To keep at or below 1.5 degrees, the world must slash emissions by 42%, and to keep at or below 2 degrees, the cut has to be 28%, the report, named, “No more hot air... please !” said.
In 2023, the world spewed 57.1 billion metric tons (62.9 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gases, the report said. That’s 1,810 metric tons (1,995 U.S. tons) of heat-trapping gases a second.
“There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video messaged released with the report. “We're playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We're out of time.”
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Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press
World is on track for a ‘catastrophic’ rise in temperature, UN report says
Julia Musto
Thu, October 24, 2024
World is on track for a ‘catastrophic’ rise in temperature, UN report says
The world is on track for a “catastrophic” 3.1 degrees Celsius (37.58 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming over preindustrial levels, according to the United Nations. Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change.
The international organization said that a previous goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) – a threshold set at the 2015 Paris Agreement – will “soon be dead” without an unprecedented global mobilization to limit climate change.
Earth is currently likely to see a global temperature rise of 2.6 degrees Celsius (36.68 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3.1 degrees Celsius, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Although, the exact amount of future warming will depend on steps taken to curb emissions of greenhouse gases produced by the fossil fuel industry.
The UN said its core message is that “ambition means nothing without action.”
“The magnitude of the challenge is indisputable. At the same time, there are abundant opportunities for accelerating mitigation action alongside achieving pressing development needs and Sustainable Development Goals,” it said.
River dwellers carry water on the sandbanks of Brazil’s Madeira river last September. The country was threatened by widespread drought and wildfires this summer. A new UN report details the “catastrophic” rise in temperatures (REUTERS/Bruno Kelly)
The impacts of climate change are already ravaging the globe, bringing more severe wildfires and extreme heat, as well as widespread and devastating flooding.
Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change, but passing the 1.5-degree threshold would bring impacts to ecosystems that are larger than the world is willing to accept.
“There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters,” António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said in a video. “Around the world, people are paying a terrible price. Record emissions mean record sea temperatures supercharging monster hurricanes; record heat is turning forests into tinder boxes and cities into saunas; record rains are resulting in biblical floods.”
Traffic warden Rai Rogers mans his street corner under the hot sun in Las Vegas, Nevada, in July 2023. Temperatures there reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit. A UN study found the world is on track for a 3.1 degrees Celsius rise in temperatures above preindustrial levels (AFP via Getty Images)
Urgent action taken this decade is essential for trying to minimize the impacts, according to experts. Many areas, including islands, are disproportionately affected by climate change. In an increasingly warming world, those troubles would only grow.
While nations have implemented country-level action plans for meeting these targets up to 2030, the UN report said greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. Last year, they rose by 1.3 percent over 2022 marks.
Across the 19 members of the G20 forum, greenhouse gas emissions increased last year, accounting for 77 percent of global emissions.
A six-fold increase in mitigation investment is needed to achieve net zero, cutting carbon emissions to a small amount that will leave zero of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Even if countries deliver on their climate plans, the report said there would be temperature rises between 2.6 degrees and 2.8 degrees Celsius (37.04 degrees Fahrenheit) over the preindustrial marks.
People ride a tractor amid severe flooding in Feni, Bangladesh, in August 2024. Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change, but passing the 1.5-degree threshold would bring impacts to ecosystems that are larger than the world is willing to accept. (REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo)More
”Nations must collectively commit to cut 42 percent off annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57 percent by 2035 in the next round of NDCs to achieve the 1.5C goal,” the UNEP cautioned.
The deadline for countries to submit their next plans, known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs, is just a few months away and ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil.. The report said they must “deliver a quantum leap in ambition.”
The publication of these findings also comes just days before the United Nations Climate Change Conference “COP29,” which will be hosted in Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku.
While 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record, climatologists say it is nearly certain that this year will set a new record.
“We’re being tested. The planet is testing us to see if we can explain things that we didn’t anticipate,” NASA’s chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt told The Independent on Tuesday. “And, we have not yet passed that test.”
With reporting from PA News
World already 'paying terrible price' for climate inaction: Guterres
AFP
Thu, October 24, 2024 at 10:07 a.m. MDT·1 min read
The current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming this century, the UN Environment Programme says
Humanity is 'paying a terrible price' for inaction on global warming, with time running out to correct the course and avoid climate disaster, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Thursday.
A new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says the next decade is critical in the fight against climate change or any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be lost.
The current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century, UNEP said in its latest Emissions Gap report.
And even if all existing pledges to cut emissions were enacted as promised, global temperatures would soar 2.6C above pre-industrial levels -- a still devastating scenario for humanity.
"Either leaders bridge the emissions gap, or we plunge headlong into climate disaster, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most," said Guterres.
"Around the world, people are paying a terrible price."
The call to action, just weeks before the UN COP29 climate summit, follows a streak of destructive and deadly extreme weather in a year expected to be the hottest in recorded history.
The world's poorest have been particularly hard hit, with typhoons and heatwaves in Asia and the Caribbean, floods in Africa, and droughts and wildfires in Latin America.
'Out of time'
UNEP's latest projections blow well past 1.5C, which nations agreed in Paris in 2015 was the safer bet to minimise the worst consequences of a warming planet.
Guterres said wealthy G20 economies in particular would need to show far more ambition in the next round of climate pledges, known as NDCs, which are due in early 2025.
Rather than declining, emissions are still rising, hitting a new record high last year.
Chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is 'virtually zero' on current trends, UN warns
Sky News
Thu, October 24, 2024
The chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is "virtually zero" on current trends, according to the UN's environment body.
This year's Emissions Gap Report finds that emissions of greenhouse gasses in 2023 were the highest on record.
More concerning, the rate of growth since 2022 was nearly twice as fast as in the decade preceding the COVID pandemic.
This comes despite decades of climate talks and a boom in wind and solar power.
The analysis finds that the current trajectory in carbon emissions puts the world on course for a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century - compared to pre-industrial times.
While emissions in many wealthy countries, including the UK, the US and the EU have peaked, they are not falling anywhere near fast enough to make up for rapidly growing emissions in places like China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.
'Crunch time is here'
"Climate crunch time is here," said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
"We need global mobilisation on a scale and pace never seen before - starting right now, before the next round of climate pledges."
The report urges nations meeting at the UN climate summit next month in Baku, Azerbaijan, to come forward with emissions-cutting commitments that don't continue to ignore the agreement they all signed in Paris in 2015.
The Paris Agreement, signed by 196 countries, pledged to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and try and prevent it from rising beyond 1.5C.
The UNEP analysis of current carbon-cutting commitments finds only one country, Madagascar, has submitted a more ambitious one since last year.
And only a handful are ambitious enough to actually slow global warming.
If all current pledges were implemented in full the world would still warm by between 2.6C-2.8C this century.
Given many countries, including the UK, are yet to implement policies to fully meet their targets, the current trajectory takes the world closer to a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming.
"Central warming projections indicate that the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C would be virtually zero," the report concludes.
'This is a battle we cannot afford to lose'
It's not all bad news however.
An analysis of the cost of measures to reduce emissions finds there is technical potential for cuts of 31 gigatons of greenhouse gasses by 2030 - around half of the total emitted globally in 2023 - and 41 gigatons by 2035.
This "massive effort" to deploy zero-carbon electricity generation like wind and solar and reverse deforestation trends would bridge the gap needed to put the world back on track to keep warming below 1.5C.
However, years of inaction have made this challenge harder, the report finds.
Emission cuts must be 7.5% steeper every year until 2035 to meet 1.5C and 4% annually to keep to 2C.
"Maybe we won't get all the way to 1.5C but 1.6C is a lot better than 1.7C," says Dr Anne Olhoff, the report's lead author.
"Basically, every fraction of a degree matters and this is a battle we cannot afford to lose."
Countries have until 2025 to submit new carbon-cutting pledges under the Paris Agreement.
But to deliver the cuts required, the main challenge - and one that will be central to talks at the upcoming climate summit in Baku - is technical and financial assistance from rich countries to poorer ones that don't bear historical responsibility for global warming.
Progress, says Dr Olhoff, "hinges on immediate and relentless action."
"Most of all, of course, it depends on political leadership."
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