The latest figures indicate how much our planet is projected to warm this century, and they have me sweating.
Look, I’m not a numbers person. And if I didn’t write about climate change for a living, this last report of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) would not achieve the same impact. He says that this century, global temperatures are on track to reach between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees Celsius above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. That statement is a snooze, right? Well, here’s why I’m eating Corn Pops as I write this.
It felt like 139.5 degrees Fahrenheit (59.7 degrees Celsius) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday. That was the heat index, a measure of both heat and humidity that is crucial because humidity slows the body’s ability to cool itself through sweat. The night before, a thousand people would have fainted from the heat during a Taylor Swift concert. concert in the city and one person died. from Brazil wetthe lands are ablaze during this month’s monster spring heat wave.
A temperature of 139.5 degrees Fahrenheit (59.7 degrees Celsius) was felt on Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This is the kind of thing happening today with just over 1 degree Celsius of global warming. Now let’s imagine about 3 degrees of warming. That is the trajectory that countries’ current policies are taking us on, according to the UNEP analysis published today called the Emissions Gap Report.
A hopeful warning is that the outlook was much worse about a decade ago, before countries adopted the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement. The dire projection in 2014 So far this century, global warming is approaching 4 degrees.
So there has been some progress. But not enough to meet the objectives of the Paris agreement and avoid even more extreme events like the one that recently hit Brazil. The Paris agreement aims to limit global warming to “far below“2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times.
Those goals could soon be out of reach, research is beginning to show. With pollution levels rising, the world could surpass that 1.5 degree threshold as early as 2029, according to a study. study published last month in the magazine Nature Climate Change. Preliminary data shows global average temperatures will briefly rise on Friday rose above 2 degrees Celsius for the first time in recorded history.
That was a brief, if scary, gap on Friday. The objective of the Paris agreement is to avoid sustained average temperatures so high. But these dangerous side effects of burning fossil fuels are happening much faster than scientists initially expected.
In 2018, United Nations climate experts published a road map to meet the goals of the Paris agreement that included achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. As countries slowly move in that direction, the window for success continues to narrow. And yet, global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise over the past year, according to the new UNEP report. Another crucial round of climate negotiations is scheduled to begin on November 30 at the United Nations conference in Dubai. There, world leaders are expected to argue about a possible agreement to phase out fossil fuels and stop climate change; It does not matter that the negotiations are supervised by a oil executive named chairman of this year’s climate conference held in a major oil-producing country or that US President Joe Biden, head of the world’s largest oil and gas producer, has reportedly decided not to attend.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antònio Guterres, at least, is always optimistic. “We know that it is still possible to make the 1.5 degree limit a reality. It requires rooting out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. And it demands a fair and equitable transition to renewable energy,” Guterres said in a Press release today.
