2023 IPCC Report
The 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was just released, stating that now is our final chance to act to avoid surpassing 1.5 degrees C heating. We need rapid action in all sectors if we are going to succeed.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry and other businesses want to scrap 1.5 as a goal because it will cut into their profits.
Read a round-up of the headlines:
“‘Urgent" actions are needed to counter human-caused climate change, says a report released Monday by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"Without urgent, effective, and equitable mitigation and adaptation actions, climate change increasingly threatens ecosystems, biodiversity, and the livelihoods, health and wellbeing of current and future generations," according to the report, released Monday in Interlaken, Switzerland.
Reports by the IPCC are considered the planet's most authoritative assessments of the state of global warming, its consequences and the measures being taken to tackle it.”
USA Today, 'Humanity is on thin ice:' Major UN report says 'urgent' action is needed to combat climate change
“Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday.
The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”
The Guardian, Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late
“Jaber has said that the goal of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C “is just non-negotiable”. But more than seven years after that momentous evening in Paris and with just seven years until 2030, the viability of the 1.5C target is under intense scrutiny. Some climate scientists think 1.5C is no longer feasible while others believe we can get back on track, but only with far more drastic action.
There are those in the business community, particularly in fossil fuel production, who want to scrap it because retaining it would mean limits on the expansion of their industry…
There is already widespread debate, much of it in private, about what would happen if the world fails to meet the 1.5C goal, whether it is time to reassess, and who the winners and losers would be if the target were scrapped or watered down…
Business figures — including some of Jaber’s peers in the hydrocarbon industry — are starting to argue in private that it would be better to put more emphasis on planning for a world with warmer temperatures than to focus on what is now likely to be an unachievable goal.
But many scientists and campaigners worry that admitting defeat in the battle to limit warming to 1.5C is a way of justifying slower action from countries and companies.
“The solution is not to change the target. The science hasn’t changed, the evidence hasn’t changed,” says Mark Howden, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the influential UN group that pulls together scientists and specialists around the world. “What we have to do is accelerate the emissions reductions.”
Financial Times, Is 1.5C still realistic? The crumbling consensus over key climate target
“The interdisciplinary team of researchers addressed ten important drivers of social change: "Actually, when it comes to climate protection, some things have now been set in motion. But if you look at the development of social processes in detail, keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees still isn't plausible," says CLICCS Speaker Prof. Anita Engels. According to the Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook, especially consumption patterns and corporate responses are slowing urgently needed climate protection measures. Other key factors like UN climate policy, legislation, climate protests and divestment from the fossil fuels are supporting efforts to meet the climate goals. As the analysis shows, however, this positive dynamic alone won't suffice to stay within the 1.5-degree limit. "The deep decarbonization required is simply progressing too slowly," says Engels.”
Science Daily, 1. 5-degree goal not plausible: Social change more important than physical tipping points
“The world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next 10 years, pushing the planet past the point of catastrophic warming — unless nations drastically transform their economies and immediately transition away from fossil fuels, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change…
The report released Monday by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the world is likely to surpass its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — by the early 2030s.
Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered...
Monday’s assessment synthesizes years of studies on the causes and consequences of rising temperatures, leading U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to demand that developed countries such as the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade earlier than the rest of the world.”
The Washington Post, World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says
“This latest report is likely to "emphasise that time is running out for the easier solutions and the more gradual transitions to a carbon free economy", says Bonnie Waring, senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for climate change and the environment at Imperial College London.”
BCC, The state of the climate in 2023
More Reading
United Nations News, Climate change making Earth ‘uninhabitable’ Guterres warns
The Guardian, The great climate silence: we are on the edge of the abyss but we ignore it
The Guardian, It’s democracy v plutocracy – this is the endgame for our planet
The Guardian, Hope amid climate chaos: ‘We are in a race between Armageddon and awesome’