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From Bloomberg Mailshot.
Original Title:
An atlas of human suffering.
Humanity can adapt to elements of climate change with massive collaboration and finance, according to the second of four monumental United Nations science reports expected by October. These opportunities “are increasingly limited if current greenhouse gas emissions do not rapidly decline.”
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports aren’t beach reads, in either format or substance. The newest one finds “unequivocal” evidence that any more delays “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity” for a globally livable future. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the report “an atlas of human suffering,” because it’s a comprehensive look at both recent and projected extreme weather events, lacerated ecosystems, and their human toll.
The IPCC has published many influential reports, none more seminal than its 2018 work about what happens if the world fails to limit global heating to 1.5C. Its conclusion that nations must eliminate emissions by 2050 sparked the global rush to make net-zero plans. Soon thereafter came a backlash, as many plans prompted accusations of greenwashing, lack of rigor, or empty rhetoric. A University of Oxford-led group in December reminded everyone that “net zero is intrinsically a scientific concept” and not one that can be dismissed because marketing people are stretching its meaning beyond credulity. At its most basic, the global net-zero push requires several things, the group wrote: immediate and comprehensive pollution cuts; cautious reliance on carbon dioxide removal technology; regulated offsets; equity and sustainability goals; and the birth of new paths to economic success.
The biggest unknown in climate science isn’t how clouds affect climate models or the rate of melting glaciers but if or how people will change. It’s hard, but that “does not mean that it is unknowable,” according to a recent study that explores how political and social dynamics could produce constructive if unpredictable public responses that lead to much tougher emissions-cutting policies. Amid growing concern that the world could heat up past even the Paris Agreement’s upper goal of 2C, the authors say their research gives them a reason to “estimate a substantial probability”—28%—“of meeting the 2C Paris Agreement target”.
Researchers in October tapped machine learning to identify 102,160 publications about real climate impacts. By combining that database with a global model, they concluded that 80% of the world’s land—where 85% of humanity lives—has already suffered in some way that can be connected to climate change. When assessing who’s to blame, recent studies have looked at global-scale emissions and assigned responsibility to major contributing countries. Analysts have now gone a step further and projected climate changes at regional levels, taking into account historical and future emissions from the world’s biggest emitters based on their climate targets. In January a small team found that emissions from just five jurisdictions—the U.S., China, the European Union, Russia, and India—are responsible for doubling the share of countries, to 92%, that are expected to suffer extremely hot years every other year by 2030.
There’s mixed news for the troubled Pacific salmon, whose diminishing ecosystems are being replenished by water from disappearing glaciers, giving them more room to reproduce—then creating more opportunities for them to be caught and filleted. Meanwhile, there are other threatened fish in the sea. Rising ocean temperatures have the unfortunate compound effect of reducing oxygen levels in water, a problem for many commercial species that live at middle depths. Scientists clinically call this trend “deoxygenation”, but it might be more familiarly described as “suffocation”.
Scientists have dubbed a Florida-size ice sheet off west Antarctica the “Doomsday Glacier” for its possibly epic contribution to sea-level rise. The Thwaites Glacier adds about 4% of today’s sea-level rise because of melting. That could jump to 25% if its ice shelf—sort of the glacier equivalent of a wine bottle cork—breaks off. A December conference report by Antarctic scientists suggested that crack could come in just five years, much sooner than expected.
