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In this context, putting the emphasis on net zero emissions by 2050 simply helps the conservative parties, which are not moving away from their fossil fuel mates because the political pressure for change is not great enough.

The Climate Reality Check 2020 (CRC) by David Spratt, Ian Dunlop and Luke Taylor of the National Centre for Climate Restoration argue that an emergency response would make climate the number one priority of politics and economics.

They provide accessible data showing that warming is speeding up and that a global 1.5°C warming is likely by 2030–or even earlier. Warming has accelerated over 2010–19 they say, and the next 25 years are projected to warm at a rate of 0.25–0.35°C per decade.

Warming faster

The conservative estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been shattered: the latest generation of climate models suggest 1.5°C may be only five to seven years away–a decade ahead of the IPCC projections.

CRC says the faster rate of warming is the direct result of rising greenhouse gas emissions, as well as declining air pollution and natural climate cycles. These lead to ocean stratification, with a hotter top layer contributing to faster warming.

CRC quotes British Professor of Energy and Climate Change Kevin Anderson as saying the world is currently on a path to 3–5ºC warming by 2100. He warned that a 4°C warmer future is “incompatible with an organised global community”. That sort of temperature rise is “beyond adaptation”, he said, because it will “devastate the majority of ecosystems and has a high probability of not being stable”.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has also estimated that on current international greenhouse emission commitments, the world is heading for 3.4ºC rise from pre-industrial revolution levels by 2100. For Australia, this translates into a hard-to-conceptualise 4.4ºC rise.

Ominously, CRC states that:

Only if the unmanageable is avoided is there a chance to stabilise the system.

The evidence from tipping points alone suggests we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute.… If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization.

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