The United Nations warns that the world must take "unprecedented" steps to avoid the worst effects of global warming

[nir]

• If the world fails to take rapid measures, temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius warns the United Nations.
• In a recent report, the UN claimed that this rise in temperature would occur if global warming continues at its current pace.
• The report suggests we only have the slimmest of opportunities remaining to avoid unthinkable damage to our climate.

Temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2030 and 2052 if global warming continues at its current pace and if the world fails to take rapid and unprecedented measures to stem the increase, a UN report said on Monday.

 

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met last week in Incheon, South Korea to finalize the report, prepared at the request of governments in 2015 when a global pact to tackle climate change was agreed.

 

The report is seen as the main scientific guide for government policymakers on how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement.

 

The Paris pact aims to limit global average temperature rise to "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels, while seeking to tighten the goal to 1.5C.

 

There has already been a rise of 1C since the mid-1800s as industrialization lifted emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas blamed for climate change.

 

A rise of 1.5C would still carry climate-related risks for nature and mankind but the risks would be lower than a rise of 2C, the report summary said.

 

Meeting the 1.5C limit required "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented" change in land and energy use, industry, buildings, transport and cities, it said, adding temperatures would be 1.5C higher between 2030 and 2052 at the current pace.

 

The targets agreed in Paris on cutting emissions would not be enough even if there were larger and more ambitious cuts after 2030, it said.

 

To contain warming at 1.5C, manmade global net carbon dioxide emissions would need to fall by about 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels and reach "net zero" by mid-century. Any additional emissions would require removing CO2 from the air.

 

"Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes," said Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC working group which assesses climate change mitigation.

 

Unprecedented Change

The summary said renewable energy would need to supply 70 to 85% of electricity by 2050 to stay within a 1.5C limit, compared with about 25% now.

 

Using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the share of gas-fired power would need to be cut to 8% and coal to between 0 and 2%. There was no mention of oil in this context in the summary.

 

If the average global temperature temporarily exceeded 1.5C, additional carbon removal techniques would be required to return warming to below 1.5C by 2100.

 

But the report said the efficacy of measures, such as planting forests, bioenergy use or capturing and storing CO2, were unproven at a large scale and carried some risks.

 

Steps like reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space were not assessed because of the uncertainties about using such technology, the report said.

 

It said keeping the rise in temperature to 1.5C would mean sea levels by 2100 would be 10 centimeters lower than if the warming was 2C, the likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century not at least once a decade, and coral reefs would decline by 70-90% instead of being virtually wiped out.

 

"The report shows that we only have the slimmest of opportunities remaining to avoid unthinkable damage to the climate system that supports life as we know it," said Amjad Abdulla, the IPCC board member and chief negotiator for the alliance of small island states.

 

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[DKT27]

Between all the international politics, there are some unbiased researchers calling for the betterment of humanity. The earth has gone through a lot and will remain not much affected, but us humans and the ones similar to us are the ones are getting and are going to get affected due to it. Would humanity not do something for itself and it's future generations. It's time we let go our biases and political views and beliefs and do something better for everyone on this planet, for doing so has no major bad sides to it as far the humanity is concerned.

 

Thereby, I also request everyone to try to not bring politics into this highly important finding as far as my personal views are concerned here.

[humble3d]

8 hours ago, DKT27 said:

Between all the international politics, there are some unbiased researchers calling for the betterment of humanity. The earth has gone through a lot and will remain not much affected, but us humans and the ones similar to us are the ones are getting and are going to get affected due to it. Would humanity not do something for itself and it's future generations. It's time we let go our biases and political views and beliefs and do something better for everyone on this planet, for doing so has no major bad sides to it as far the humanity is concerned.

 

Thereby, I also request everyone to try to not bring politics into this highly important finding as far as my personal views are concerned here.

 

 

 

 

Thank you so very much...
 

[nir]

Who drew it? Trump asks of dire climate report, appearing to mistrust 91 scientific experts

 

Who drew it? The president wanted to know.

 

Ninety-one leading scientists from 40 countries who together examined more than 6,000 scientific studies.

 

Specialists such as Katharine Mach, who studies new approaches to climate assessment at Stanford University; Tor Arve Benjaminsen, a human geographer at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences; and Raman Sukumar, an ecologist at the Indian Institute of Science.

 

They are among the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to make recommendations to world leaders. Their report, issued Monday, warns of environmental catastrophe as early as 2040 and advises that the worst can be staved off only if civilization is transformed more profoundly than at any point in recorded history.

 

President Trump, in comments to reporters Tuesday on the South Lawn, seemed unaware of the IPCC, as the body is known, and expressed doubts about its determinations. The remarks put him at odds with most world leaders, as well as with scientific fact — a familiar position for the brash former businessman who has long ridiculed climate concerns.

 

“It was given to me. It was given to me, and I want to look at who drew, you know, which group drew it,” the president said, as Hurricane Michael edged closer to the Florida’s northern Gulf Coast, threatening devastating flooding, which scientists say is exacerbated by rising sea levels.

 

Trump said some reports were good, while others were not as good.

 

“Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren’t so good,” he added.

 

The 700-page report includes drawings of sorts — graphs and other visual renderings. But it is mostly detailed analysis, dense with citations, of the impacts of surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming over preindustrial levels.

 

A 33-page summary for policymakers includes four main points, A through D, each with an elaborate set of sub points, arranged in digestible paragraphs.

 

It anticipates skepticism. For each finding, the authors report a level of confidence, from very low to very high, “grounded in an evaluation of underlying evidence and agreement.” For instance, the scientists have “high confidence” that human activities are contributing to significant warming and “very high confidence” that partnerships with nonstate actors, such as the banking system and scientific institutions, would help limit warming to livable levels.

 

Trump assured reporters: “But I will be looking at it, absolutely.” Yet he famously doesn’t read much, so the chances he will look at it, let alone read it, are in question.

 

He has scorned climate science and promised to yank the United States from the Paris climate agreement, which gave rise to the report issued this week.

 

Meanwhile, he has pledged to speed up the burning of coal, which the report warns would block pathways to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. And just Monday, the Trump administration announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would be changing a rule to allow year-round sales of E15, or fuel that is 15 percent ethanol by volume.

 

“I want more industry. I want more energy. I want more,” Trump told reporters Tuesday before leaving for a rally in Iowa. He said he was dissatisfied with the current price of crude oil per barrel, $74.

 

“I want low prices, so I’m okay with it,” he added. “You know, it’s an amazing substance. You look at the Indy cars. They run 100 percent on ethanol.”

 

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) hailed the plan to lift the ban on summer sales of high-ethanol blends, calling the long-expected White House announcement “a very good victory for agriculture.” As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley has just finished leading the Republicans in a successful battle to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee, to the Supreme Court.

 

Trump called the notion that year-round sales have a negative impact — the EPA previously cited smog concerns — a “misnomer,” which is actually a misnomer, meaning an inaccurate use of a term.

 

Conspiracy theories about the climate fill Trump’s Twitter page. He has called global warming a “canard,” speculated about global cooling and, on Election Day in 2012, claimed that “global warming was created by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” He frequently cites weather reports about rain and snow to argue, contrary to scientific consensus, that the planet can’t be warming.

 

“By the way, it’s supposed to be 70 degrees today. It’s freezing. Speaking of global warming, where is — we need some global warming!” he shouted in April 2016 during a rally in Rochester, N.Y.

 

The EPA’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, told The Post recently that the U.S. would remain engaged in U.N. work on climate change, despite Trump’s stated plan to withdraw from the Paris accord. But he declined to specify a level at which the country would seek to keep warming.

 

Meanwhile, the administration has made climate predictions of its own. A 500-page impact statement drawn up over the summer by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration assumed that the planet would warm a calamitous seven degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

 

The statement, meant to rationalize Trump’s decision to freeze certain fuel-efficiency standards, argued that temperatures would rise that amount over the average between 1986 and 2005 whether or not the Obama-era guidelines in question were stalled. From preindustrial levels, the analysis assumed a rise of roughly four degrees Celsius, or seven degrees Fahrenheit, vastly more than the U.N. panel says is sustainable.

 

This sort of increase, scientists say, would have hellish consequences. It could put parts of Manhattan and Miami underwater, while causing heat waves that suffocate whole swaths of the globe.

 

Source

[zadkiel]

Some environmental critics say global warming is a lie, rather an ice age.