State of the Climate: Much Worse than Predicted

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Given the dated nature of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel of some of the worldโ€™s most respected climate scientists have put together an update called The Copenhagen Diagnosis.

The news is worse than predicted on everyย front.

  • Global carbon dioxide emissions are up 40 per cent fromย 1990.
  • The global warming trend has continued, despite a temporary decline in solarย energy.
  • Both Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rates, as are glaciers the worldย over.
  • Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from the IPCCโ€™s lastย report.
  • Global average sea-level has risen at a rate 80% above past IPCC predictions over the past 15ย years.
  • Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets. Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could pass irreversible tipping points if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout thisย century.

Even if global emission rates are stabilized at presentโ€“day levels, the Copenhagen Diagnosis advises that just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability of warming exceeding 2oC, widely considered an overall tippingย point.

If global warming is to be limited to 2oC above pre-industrial values, emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, we need to reach near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases well within this century. Average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations inย 2000.

Itโ€™s also outside even the most optimistic scenario and the blockers and delayers are bringing to Copenhagen. As the Diagnosis team says, every year we delay action drives us closer to a tipping point beyond which lies a global environmental catastrophe unimagined in the human age. We can only hope that the negotiators areย listening.

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