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Ariadne (@[email protected])
climatejustice.socialAttached: 1 image
Don't want to admit we've blown handling the #ClimateCrisis? Just change the definition! In 2021, the official definition of more than 1.5 °C of #GlobalWarming changed, did you know that? Exceeding the #ParisAgreement no longer means "in any given year", but
"... the Paris agreement target was clarified in 2021 as being the middle of a 20-year period during which the average global temperature hits 1.5 °C above the average temperature between 1850 and 1900. “This data doesn’t mean that we have breached the lower 1.5 °C safety limit of the Paris agreement, because that will apply to the long term,” says Rogelj."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02995-7
"Earth’s average 2023 temperature is now likely to reach 1.5 °C of warming - But to breach the Paris agreement’s limit, the heating must be sustained for many years."
"Earth is hurtling towards its average temperature rising by 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. One climate model suggests that the likelihood of reaching that threshold in 2023 is now 55%.
The 1.5 °C figure was a preferred maximum warming limit set by the United Nations in the landmark 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. Climate scientists use different models to make predictions. In Breaching the Paris limit requires a long-term trend of warming of 1.5 °C or more, but some research groups tracking average annual temperatures in isolation are already predicting 1.5 °C of warming this year. In May, a World Meteorological Organization report said that there was a 66% chance that the average annual temperature would breach 1.5 °C of warming between 2023 and 2027."
#ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Klima #Klimakrise #Climate #Emissions #CO2 #WMO #COP28 #ClimateDiary
What’s to achieve by saying we’ve blown it - that people spark a revolution, or give up trying ? Some of us have been trying for decades, others have been denying for decades, doubt either set gives up.
The original goal the UNFCCC (Art2) was defined in terms of concentrations, so in 1990s diplomats were arguing about 350, 450, 550ppm - 350 being the arbitrary level at the time of the first global climate conferences. I am partly responsible for pushing the shift towards a temperature target, arguing that it would reduce the uncertainty for climate impacts (although increasing it for emissions pathways), but it was extremely hard to get US, China, India to sign up even to <2ºC (COP15). As climate impacts projections got better quantified the most vulnerable countries (mostly African and small islands - together they are many in UN… ), later joined by EU, insisted on trying for a lower number, but we had already passed 1ºC, so we got 1.5º as a compromise in Paris. That 0.5ºC might make the difference as to whether we save Greenland and WAIS, or many ecosystems and food systems. Nevertheless the decimal places are still arbitrary (also influenced by choice of base period, and negotiating in ºC not ºF ), no study quantified impacts vs efforts sufficiently to distinguish a threshold at 0.1ºC accuracy. What matters is that people understand the huge inertia in the systems, in heat and carbon transfer in the ocean, ice and biosphere, also in demographics and social systems. I made an interactive model - SWIM to help explore this. We have to keep trying.
I completely agree. In my case, I trusted that it would be dealt with like leaded gasoline, the ozone layer, etc. Then the late 2010s happened and Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, and other climate denying fascista/uthoritarians in mass gained power and the things warned about started happening.
I do what I can, and try to convince others to do what they can. Individual actions add up, but at least in the US we need a major infrastructure, culture, and urban design overhaul. That requires persuading people.