In bleak report, U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In bleak report, U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change
NOVEMBER 26, 2019
Smoke rises from chimneys of the gas boiler houses as the temperature dropped to minus-7 Celsius in Moscow this month. (Maxim Shipenkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)The world has squandered so much time mustering the action necessary to combat climate change that rapid, unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences, according to new findings from the United Nations.
Already, the past year has brought devastating hurricanes, relentless wildfires and crippling heat waves, prompting millions of protesters to take to the streets to demand more attention to a problem that seems increasingly urgent.
Amid that growing pressure to act, Tuesday’s U.N. report offers a grim assessment of how off-track the world remains. Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the United Nations’ annual “emissions gap” report, which assesses the difference between the world’s current path and the changes needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.
As part of that deal, world leaders agreed to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels; the current trajectory is nearly twice that.
Should that pace continue, scientists say, the result could be widespread, catastrophic effects: Coral reefs, already dying in some places, would probably dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Some coastal cities, already wrestling with flooding, would be constantly inundated by rising seas. In much of the world, severe heat, already intense, could become unbearable.
Global greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning 2020 — a rate currently nowhere in sight — to meet the most ambitious aims of the Paris climate accord, the report issued early Tuesday found. Its authors acknowledged that the findings are “bleak.” After all, the world has never demonstrated the ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions on such a scale.
“Our collective failure to act early and hard on climate change means we now must deliver deep cuts to emissions,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a statement announcing the findings. “We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated.”
The sobering report comes at a critical moment, when it remains unclear whether world leaders can summon the political will to take the ambitious action scientists say is essential. So far, the answer has been no.
Global emissions have risen about 1.5 percent annually on average over the past decade. In the coming decade, that trend must reverse — profoundly and rapidly — if world leaders are to limit the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) or even 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels, scientists say.
Tuesday’s report, which is viewed as the benchmark of the world’s progress in meeting its climate goals, underscores how the pledges that nations made years ago in Paris are woefully inadequate to achieving the goals of the accord. To hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, the authors found that countries would need to triple the ambition of their current promises. To hit the more ambitious target of no more than 1.5 degrees of warming, they found, nations would need to ramp up their pledges fivefold.
“Every year of delay beyond 2020 brings a need for faster cuts, which become increasingly expensive, unlikely and impractical,” the report states. “Delays will also quickly put the 1.5C goal out of reach.”
A Washington Post analysis this year found that roughly 20 percent of the world has already warmed to troubling levels. Slowing future warming will require monumental changes, such as phasing out gas-powered cars, halting the construction of coal-fired power plants and overhauling how humans grow food and manage land.
But the world’s carbon emissions have moved in the opposite direction. The United States’ energy-related CO2 emissions rose 2.7 percent last year , after a gradual decline. That increase came as the Trump administration continued to roll back Obama-era climate regulations and made clear that the United States, once a leader in pushing for climate action, will withdraw from the Paris accord in 2020.
Investment in renewable energy in the developing world also dropped significantly in 2018, according to an analysis released Monday by BloombergNEF, which tracks worldwide energy trends.
Last year developing countries added “an extra Texas worth of coal generation,” said Ethan Zindler, head of Americas for the group. “And that’s obviously scary.” At the same time, China’s investment in clean energy projects dropped from $122 billion in 2017 to $86 billion in 2018.
On Monday, the intergovernmental World Meteorological Organization reported that levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had hit a record high and that the trend “means that future generations will be confronted with increasingly severe impacts of climate change.”
“There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement," WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas said in an announcement, noting that the last time the Earth experienced comparable CO2 concentrations, “sea level was 10 to 20 meters higher than now.”
Next month at the annual U.N. climate conference in Spain, representatives from countries around the world will face pressure to ramp up their ambition — not just their rhetoric — over the coming year. So far, only a handful of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters have policies in place to meet the promises they made in Paris four years ago, much less more aggressive strategies “for transformative climate commitments at the breadth and scale necessary,” Tuesday’s report says. The report also found that cutting greenhouse gas emissions could do more than just mitigate climate change. It also could reduce air pollution, improve public health and help conserve wildlife.
Niklas Höhne, a German climatologist and founding partner of NewClimate Institute, which created the Climate Action Tracker, a tool that tracks whether nations are meeting their goals, said Tuesday’s report demonstrates in painful detail how past inaction has made the urgency around climate change more dire.
“We are not a little bit off, we are far off from where we should be,” Höhne said in an email. “The longer action is delayed, the higher cuts will be required. We cannot wait another 10 years.”
Still, Höhne and others have continued to find hope that the world might still marshal the action necessary to stave off the worst effects of climate change.
Already, 70 countries have told U.N. officials they plan to craft more ambitious national climate pledges in 2020 — even as some of the world’s largest emitters have yet to follow suit. Scores of private companies have set their own targets, vowing to investors to sharply cut their carbon footprints. A growing list of states and cities have pushed ahead with policies aimed at meeting the goals of the Paris accord, even as the U.S. government remains on the sidelines.
Even the authors of Tuesday’s depressing U.N. report wrote that they see slivers of hope “behind the grim headlines."
“A number of encouraging developments have taken place,” they wrote, “and the political focus on the climate crisis is growing in several countries, with voters and protesters, particularly youth, making it clear that it is their number one issue.”
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At the end of the century none of us will be alive, but a few of our children will be , some of our grandchildren will be , and most of our great grandchildren will be. In generational terms, it isn't that far away.
A global temperature rise of 7 degrees will create misery for hundreds of millions of people. What if all this waiting and dithering is wrong?
Since you a well known expert on just about everything, what specific actions regarding climate should be made by the US.
What should all the other nations on the planet do? Should the world's economies be ruined because of an unsupported myth?
If you are wrong the world will become uninhabitably hot and stormy. Are you willing to risk future generations on your belief that the opinion of so many scientists is a myth?
I don't believe the scary scenarios and the ignorant fear mongering being foisted upon us by the crazy climate change cult.
If you could promote common sense and achievable solutions instead of hysteria, people might begin to take you a bit more seriously.
[deleted]
I cant remember the last time you said something worth reading, but you keep commenting to me, so I am "trapped". Oh wait, we have ignore now.
But what if Greg jones "Right". That means we've wasted good "Hard Earned money", on NOTHING !
Should we err on the side of protecting the earth or should we err on the side of letting it burn up?
If we had the "Absolute Power" to change "Planets" to our liking....we wouldn't be stuck on this one !
I think we should all deny the existence of science, complain that China and India aren't doing their share, Invest in oil and coal stocks, buy a new house on top of a hill, and invest in a new diesel powered money counter... Oh... and buy up land on the bottom side of the flat Earth.
Well, what's stopping you John? Sadly, it doesn't work for me.
Doesnt work.
So you don't have any common sense solutions to this potential disaster either. You know, some actions or programs that are doable and affordable, able to be implemented worldwide?
Nope, the best you can do is sarcasm and snark.
You won't know your "Grandchildren's" Life is worse in the future. You'll be dead !
Obviously you don't care about your children and your grandchildrens' futures because you'll be dead right?
Did your parents and grandparents care about you ?
After all....they are the ones that got you in the mess we "Supposedly" are in now.
But they're dead....so they don't know..... right ?
You claim to know climate science. So can you tell us why what is actually happening is not what the models have predicted. What "incontrovertible" science can you share?
Should us some science that supports your claims. Why are you so easily led to accepting this theory without intense skeptical scrutiny.
The climate change cultists seem to be such a bunch of mindless sheep.
I dont know if common sense programs on the cheap are the answer, nor is it likely that a stop gap is the answer. I am not a scientist and dont play one on the internet. As the overwhelming consensus of the scientists is that climate change is a real and present threat, we should act while it is still possible. Denial is not a good option. Even if action is an over reaction, it is better to err on the side of saving the planet than it is to err on the side of letting the planet burn up. Call it insurance.
I know I don't. I'm not sure they even exist.
That's part of the problem with climate change. Knowing that we most likely can't reverse it - because it would happen without us, just at a much slower pace - makes some people feel there's no point in worrying about it. Not being personally impacted makes others not care. Being addicted to energy - and there are no forms of energy that don't have their problems - is another, and very few of us are willing to go back to the days when we didn't have cars and planes heat and a/c and refrigerators and all those good things.
Even if we came up with grand plans, such as simulating a volcano to make the earth cooler, those are bound to have repercussions we can't foresee.
All I know is that everyone on here with young grandchildren should realize that your grandkids are likely going to live in a far different world. Our military has identified climate change as something that poses a threat to our national security - imagine the impact on the world as we have migrations on an unprecedented scale, wars over water and land ... it will not be pretty.
But just think! If the human race can survive this, millions of years down the road our descendants will have to deal with the effects of all the continents merging back into one. Maybe more ice ages (the current global warming may have screwed up that schedule). Asteroid hitting us. It's a little fatalistic, but we are eventually doomed either way. At the end of it all, the sun turns into a red dwarf and destroys Earth.
Aren't we living in a far different world than our "Parents" or "Grandparents" did ?
Is that a "Bad' thing ?
"It's a little fatalistic, but we are eventually doomed either way."
Nature has shown us.....that's a "Given".
Time to Live and make the "BEST" of "YOUR" life. That's all YOU can actually do !
One day...your gonna wonder where "Time" went.
like a rhode scholar
Fun game.
You've been playing that game for quite awhile (what does your trash look like). "Talk" is "Cheap"....ain't it ?
I did do the "College" thingy in my life, and used that experience for "Self Gain" !
Don't like my common sense solutions Greg? They're right out of the Republican playbook. All except for the buying up the other side of the disk of course because we all know that you'll just fall off.
Are you "Sad" you haven't been able to get yours....yet ?
Vote "Left".… they'll "Give it" to you.
sounds like somebody else, who, on occasion is discussed on these threads.
It's all about ME has become common since the election of the infection festering boiling swollen boil of Orange gonna burst like a reservoir on a used condemnation of traits once thought great, now, just , or un, Trumpp feels it fine to teach the discourse of his divorce,
to that of reality which has been artificially enhanced like the boob job in the house of White Power train driven off the trax by driving off the fax machined and honed to his specifications, proving so many minds have taken vacations without reservations, cause they seem to have none, to go with their explanations as we become an expletive nation cursed by one who couldn't in cursive, as he can't read to print, say or hint, anything worth while as he flounders in his fluke known as denial without explanation needed by a stupified nation in decline, cause of the under where crustaceans would be found his spine, all fine, a chord ding dong to the door bell shaped like a knocker to allow his door bell to be smashed every time the boob is nocked by his knockers, Nicked by his Knickers, Bached by his Bachers,
who can't seem to see past his fake knockers,
so they try it,
and i, and many others who can see further,
will continue to
KNOCK IT OFF
and use your feeble minds !
People can not actually be this gullible, travels in pacts apparently,
they're aren't many growups left to educate the child, as it may take a village of people, to grab torches and pitch forks out of tune with reality, but, what , exactly does that have to do
with OUR current reality of village idiots defending an Orange clown who was never well Red
or Nose too much about too Much
.
What a bad Joke, that just keeps punchin and pushin over the line
people just seem to keep him allowing to move, as it was his own goal, to forever move and cross that line that for a Democrat was so easily and differently defined
.
Hippo critical crocodile tears from the jaws of allegations all drowning in denial,
with out a paddle to boat or boast
as this potUS should already be burnt toast,, instead of the seedy role no one should model
as he was stuck with too much glue, huffed and puffed rice paper till starch naked and afraid are laid his invisible clothes on the bed from which he LIES without disguise,
only DISGUST
"READ" the "BOOK" !
I've noticed....for quite some time now !
yea, but i gave you notice quite sometime before that
You did
, before you DIDN'T ?
At the end of it all, the sun turns into a red dwarf and destroys Earth.
Actually, it will become a red giant, kinda like Betelgeuse,
"U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change"
Time to Shut down the factories, turn off the electrical grid, and padlock the gas pumps.
Should we err on the side of protecting the earth or should we err on the side of letting it burn up?
Then "DO" the list I posted. The U.N. did say it would take "Drastic" measures.....right ?
So you vote to let the earth burn up so future generations can "warm up to" the idea.
I noted what " MUST " be done !
You don't agree ?
We see and hear the dumbass deniers all the damn time. Yet, as Venice is sinking beneath the waves and you cannot get homeowners insurance on our coasts anymore they see nothing. Aren't you all getting damn tired of that stupid bassackwards bullshit?
The anti-science flat earth know nothing fundies are a plague not just on American but the whole world. Ot is no wonder most of the world hates us...
Me thinks it's more of a "City Placement" Problem.
I hear that "Atlantis" had a "Water Issue" too !
Looks like it's time to reconsider the "CityPlacement" (sic) of Miami too.
Miami has had that problem waaaaay before "Change" became the "go-to word" for the "left" !
I've lived there.
Their "Drainage System", if it even exists in places, sucks in the first place.
"When it rains in Miami, the politicians pour it on"
Change has been happening since way before "Change" became a "go-to word".
Did you know that this planet has had warming ages, and Ice Ages, before man existed ?
I am aware of that. I'm also aware that, this time, a lot of it is caused by humans. Even if it weren't it's our responsibility to do whatever we can to mitigate it. We cannot just say fuck the grandchildren it's their fault they were born too late all while legislating a mandate that they be born.
So, after Billions of years worth of "Change" on this planet, NOW....after only 200 years of industrialization, Humans have caused MOST EVERYTHING ?
"Even if it weren't it's our responsibility to do whatever we can to mitigate it."
And what is your proposal to "Solve" your issue ?
Maybe a "Carbon Tax" (Just Moving "Others" money around)…. which would make Al Gore so happy if that happened. His "Investment in "Climate" would soar.
Recite some solutions to this "urgent" problem.
We appear here in the Rocky Mountain West to be having an old fashioned average ordinary winter. Looking out the window moderate snow is falling and the temps are in the low 20's. Further East out on the plains it is much stormier, almost a blizzard, and it's all heading east. The strongest storm of the season is moving into the Pacific Northwest. Are these storms the result of climate change? Hard to say. Why do the climate change cultists blame this coming catastrophe entirely on the United States?
So what? Rising oceans aren't to the Rockies, yet?
At only a tenth of an inch a year, that'll take a few million years.
That amount is right...do your research and look it up.
Yes JBB Venice is sinking because Venice is literally sinking.
"Scientists first recognized the problem decades ago when they noticed that pumping of groundwater from beneath Venice was causing the city to settle into the earth. The pumping and its effects have long since stopped, but the city continues to sink".
Venice is sinking because the sea is rising...
Duh.
Not a bit of science in that article. Same old propaganda.
The UN needs to say overpopulation is the cause of this problem
If we execute a few hundred million people will the climate change problem go away?
The sobering report comes at a critical moment, when it remains unclear whether world leaders can summon the political will to take the ambitious action scientists say is essential. So far, the answer has been no.
So it appears the rest of the world is not taking it seriously either. They forgot that whatever we do now will take a century to have any effect.
We could already be beyond the tipping point.
So you are against the only option that stands a chance of working; which is population control?
It doesn't matter how many wind farms, solar panels, tidal farms, or other reusable sources of energy are made- until population controls are set in place the amount of people will far outstrip what resources can provide.
Either we bring the population under control; or the planet will. Whether it be by disease, famine, weather, or war brought about by shortage of resources to sustain the life humans have become used to.
Rainbow Six!
Some scientists say that another Ice Age is entirely possible. Maybe in our lifetimes.
Which scientists? Who do they work for?
And... He's gone.
World leaders agree to a lot of things and then go back to doing whatever the hell they feel like doing.
But the latter is not shown to be the cause of the former. In fact, following the link in this sentence it is pretty evident that the rise in CO2 emissions has little or nothing to do with Trump. For one thing, the story has a chart, which shows an even bigger spike in U.S. CO2 emissions in 2011. Is that Obama's fault?
The main reason CO2 goes up seems to be an increase in economic activity. More trucks on the road, greater demand for electricity, more people traveling, etc. What's more, increases in U.S. CO2 emissions are right in line with that of other industrial nations.
In fact, U.S. CO2 emissions peaked in 2005 and have been on a general decline ever since. One of the reasons for this is general improvements in technology related to energy generation. Hopefully, that will continue.