According to the World Economic Forum:

The 1.5-degree Celsius threshold is considered a critical threshold, as it is the point at which the impacts of climate change are expected to become increasingly severe.

Yet for some years now it’s been obvious, although widely ignored, that there’s no realistic prospect of humanity keeping global temperatures below the Paris Agreement target of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels – or even below the seemingly rather easier target of ‘well below’ 2ºC. Here’s why:

The 1.5ºC target

In its 2018 Special Report (para C1) the IPCC recommended that, to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5ºC target, global CO2 emissions should ‘decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030’. As global emissions in 2010 were 34.0 gigatonnes (Gt), they would therefore have to come down to about 18.7 Gt by 2030 to meet the target. But, just three countries (China, the US and India) already exceed that (by 2.2 Gt) and taken together are likely to increase (or at best stabilise) their emissions over the next four years. Moreover another 194 countries, together with shipping and aviation, are the source of about 20 Gt of CO2 and, unless established trends are reversed, it’s very likely that figure will either be unchanged or will have increased by 2030. Therefore global emissions will probably be far above 18.7 Gt and, if the IPCC got it right, warming of much more than 1.5ºC target is overwhelmingly likely.

The ‘well below’ 2ºC target

The Paris Agreement’s ‘well below’ 2ºC target faces the same problem. In its 2018 Special Report (para C1) the IPCC recommended that, to limit ‘global warming to below 2°C’, global CO2 emissions should ‘decline by about 25% from 2010 levels by 2030’. Therefore, as 2010 global emissions were 34.0 Gigatonnes (Gt), they’d have to come down to about 25.5 Gt by 2030 for emissions to get ‘below’ 2ºC – say 24.5 Gt for ‘well below’ 2ºC as specified by the Paris Agreement’s Article 2.1(a). But just 7 countries (China, the USA, India, Russia, Iran, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia) already account for over 24.5 Gt and these are countries that taken together are likely to increase (or at best stabilise) their emissions over the next four years. Moreover another 190 countries, together with shipping and aviation, are the source of about 17 Gt of CO2 and, unless established trends are reversed, it’s very likely that figure will either be unchanged or will have increased by 2030. Therefore global emissions will probably be far above 24.5 Gt and, if the IPCC got it right, warming of much more than 2ºC is overwhelmingly likely.

References:

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/09/prevent-1-5-degrees-celsius-climate-threshold/

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm

https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=co2tot#emissions_table

6 Comments

  1. The numbers are obvious, but they need to be set out clearly like this in order that people can understand exactly what we’re talking about. There is far too much obfuscation and ignoring of reality within the climate-obsessed establishment.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. On those numbers, allowing for a constant decline in annual emissions, the budget was blown by the end of 2024. Unless cumulative emissions don’t matter any more.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Third, humans are a small contributor to atmospheric CO2, insects add more CO2 than we do, including our domestic animals, just one of many natural sources.

    Like

  4. I see that WEF article is dated Sep 4, 2023 & has a cheerful desert pic with dead trees & the caption “The future of our planet depends on our ability to limit global warming and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

    It sets the scene at the start – “The summer of 2023 has been a season of weather extremes”

    Won’t bore readers with the rest, but found end quotes from “Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change” worth repeating –

    “To get people to act, my hypothesis is, you need to reach them not just by convincing them to be good citizens and saying it’s good for the world to keep below 1.5 degrees, but showing how they individually will be impacted,” says Eltahir, who specializes on the study of regional climates, focusing on how climate change impacts the water cycle and frequency of extreme weather such as heat waves.

    “True climate progress requires a dramatic change in how the human system gets its energy,” Paltsev says. “It is a huge undertaking. Are you ready personally to make sacrifices and to change the way of your life? If one gets an honest answer to that question, it would help to understand why true climate progress is so difficult to achieve.”

    Wonder what “honest answer” he was expecting!!!

    Like

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