On Monday, October 8, the groundbreaking climate change report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change IPCC was released, the new report being the most important climate change report ever. It is overly alarming and shows that we actually have no time to waste.
“The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” Debra Roberts, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group on impacts, said.
“It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now. This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”
Climate change, or better, the climate crisis, is one of the largest threats of all times, if not the largest.
At present, our world experiences the effects of a global temperature rise of 1°C above pre-industrial level and these effects are already seen everywhere around the world: Soaring temperatures, heat waves, diminishing Arctic sea ice, rising sea levels, droughts, wildfires, weather extremes with hurricanes, tornados etc.
Climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies, all species, ecosystems, and the whole planet.
That’s why the overwhelming majority of countries around the world, 195 nations, adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015 with the aim to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
The next few years are probably the most important in our history.Debra Roberts
Ninety-one authors and review editors from 40 countries prepared the new IPCC report in order to study this limit, what it means to the world and how it could be achieved.
The report’s full name is: “Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
The 91 authors and review editors prepared the report summarizing and citing more than 6,000 scientific references on climate change and the contributions of thousands of experts and government reviewers worldwide.
You can find the full report and the Summary for Policymakers here.
The scientists make it very clear that climate change is already happening all around the world, and they are warning that every fraction of additional warming, every half a degree, worsens the impact and could lead to disastrous, potentially irreversible effects.
As Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II put it: “Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5ºC or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems.”
The IPCC scientists urgently warn the world of a global temperature rise exceeding 1.5°C, while limiting it to 1.5ºC requires a transition unprecedented in scale: “rapid, farreaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”
They also say that this is possible ”within the laws of chemistry and physics” if the personal and political will is there and that the wider opportunities and benefits are huge, actually so huge that they are deciding upon our survival and that of all other species and future generations!
The report points out that to limit global warming to 1.5 C, global carbon dioxide emissions need to fall by about 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels (that is 58% below the 2015 emissions, due to latest figures of the Global Carbon Project), and would have to come down to zero emissions by 2050.
The Summary for Policy Makers presents some of the key findings of the Special Report relevant to global warming of 1.5°C and gives a comparison between global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C above preindustrial levels.
An additional half-degree of warming would mean greater losses for all kind of species and their habitats. Half a degree more means the difference between a world with coral reefs and Arctic summer sea ice and a world without them. Coral reefs would already decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.