The UN report on global warming carries a life and death warning
The UN report on global warming carries a life and death warning
On Sunday, an international panel of scientists reported Sunday that preventing a single degree of additional heat could make a difference in life or death over the next few decades to multitudes of people and ecosystems on this rapidly warming planet. But they offer little hope that the world will rise to the challenge.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winner of the Nobel Prize, issued its grim report at a meeting in Incheon, South Korea.
In the 728-page document, the United States organization detailed how weather, Health and ecosystems would be in better shape if world leaders could somehow limit future warming caused by humans to only 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (half a degree Celsius) as of now, instead of the globally agreed 1.8 degree F goal ( 1 degree C). Among other things:
- Half of people would suffer from lack of water.
- There would be fewer deaths and diseases due to heat, smog and infectious diseases.
- The seas would rise almost 4 inches (0.1 meters) less.
- Half of the animals with backs and plants would lose most of their habitats.
- There would be substantially less heat waves, downpours and droughts.
- It is possible that the ice sheet of West Antarctica will not melt irreversibly.
- And it may be enough to prevent most of the world's coral reefs from dying.
"For some people, this is a life or death situation without a doubt," said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, lead author of the report.
From now on, limiting the warming to 0.9 degrees means that the world can maintain an "appearance" of the ecosystems we have. Adding another 0.9 degrees on top of that, the more flexible global goal, essentially means a different and more challenging Earth for people and species, said another of the report's lead authors, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Institute for Global Change. the University of Queensland, Australia.
But reaching the more ambitious goal of a little less warming would require immediate draconian cuts in gas emissions that trap heat and dramatic changes in the energy field. While the panel of the U.N. says that technically that is possible, saw little chance of the necessary adjustments happening.
In 2010, international negotiators adopted the goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) since pre-industrial times. It is called the goal of 2 degrees. In 2015, when the nations of the world accepted the historic Paris climate agreement, they set dual targets: 2 degrees C and a more demanding 1.5 degrees C since pre-industrial times. The 1.5 was at the behest of the vulnerable countries that condemned to death to 2 degrees.
The world has already warmed 1 degree C since pre-industrial times, so the conversation is really about the difference of another degree C or 0.9 degrees F from now on.
"There is no definitive way to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 above pre-industrial levels," said the report requested by the US. More than 90 scientists wrote the report, which is based on more than 6,000 peer reviews.
"Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate," the report said.
Deep in the report, scientists say that less than 2 percent of 529 of their possible future scenarios calculated kept the warming below the 1.5 target without the temperature rising above that and somehow coming back down in the future.
The promises made by countries in the Paris agreement in 2015 are "clearly insufficient to limit the warming to 1.5," said one of the study's lead authors, Joerj Roeglj, of Imperial College London.
"I just do not see the possibility of doing one and a half" and even 2 degrees seems unlikely, said Gregg Marland, environmental scientist at Appalachian State University, who is not part of the UN panel but has tracked global emissions for decades for the Department of Energy of the United States. He compared the report with an academic exercise that asked what would happen if a frog had wings.
However, the authors of the report said they remain optimistic.
Limiting the warming to the lower goal "is not impossible, but will require unprecedented changes," said the head of the EE panel. UU., Hoesung Lee, at a press conference in which scientists repeatedly refused to explain how feasible that goal is. They said that it is a decision of governments to decide if these unprecedented changes are applied.
"We have a monumental task in front of us, but it's not impossible," Mahowald said previously. "This is our chance to decide what the world will be like."
According to the report, to limit warming to the goal of lower temperatures, the world needs "rapid and far-reaching" changes in energy systems, land use, industrial and city design, transportation and the use of buildings. The annual levels of carbon dioxide pollution that are still rising should now be reduced by about half by 2030 and then close to zero by 2050. The emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as methane, will also have to decrease. Quickly changing fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas to do this could be more expensive than the less ambitious target, but it would clean the air of other pollutants. And that would have the secondary benefit of avoiding more than 100 million premature deaths throughout this century, according to the report.
"The risks related to climate for health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth are expected to increase with global warming," the report says, adding that it is more likely that the world's poor are the most affected.
Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said that extreme weather, especially heat waves, will be more lethal if you pass the lower goal.
Meeting the hardest goal "could result in 420 million people being less exposed to extreme heat waves and 65 million less exposed to exceptional heat waves," the report said. The deadly heat waves that hit India and Pakistan in 2015 will become almost annual events if the world reaches the hotter of the two targets, according to the report.
Coral and other ecosystems are also at risk. The report said warmer-water coral reefs "will disappear to a large extent."
The result will determine if "my grandchildren could see beautiful coral reefs," said Oppenheimer of Princeton.
For scientists there is some "illusion" that the report will encourage governments and people to act quickly and forcefully, said one of the panel's leaders, the German biologist Hans-Otto Portner. "If no action is taken, it will take the planet to an unprecedented climate future."
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears. His work can be found here.
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The Associated Press Department of Science and Health receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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