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1.5C above pre-industrial levels is the threshold beyond which our damage to the
climate will rapidly become irreversible. Photograph: Janez Volmajer/Alamy
View image in fullscreen
1.5C above pre-industrial levels is the threshold beyond which our damage to the
climate will rapidly become irreversible. Photograph: Janez Volmajer/Alamy
Climate crisis

This article is more than 1 year old


SCIENTISTS DELIVER ‘FINAL WARNING’ ON CLIMATE CRISIS: ACT NOW OR IT’S TOO LATE

This article is more than 1 year old

IPCC report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to
world

 * Analysis: Humanity at the crossroads
 * Timeline: The IPCC’s reports

Fiona Harvey Environment editor
Tue 21 Mar 2023 00.00 AEDTLast modified on Tue 21 Mar 2023 08.41 AEDT
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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.”



In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been
inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown
has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions
of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing
hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems.

Monday’s final instalment, called the synthesis report, is almost certain to be
the last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global
temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond
which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.

0:57

IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning' on 1.5C – video


Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace International, said: “This report
is definitely a final warning on 1.5C. If governments just stay on their current
policies, the remaining carbon budget will be used up before the next IPCC
report [due in 2030].”

More than 3bn people already live in areas that are “highly vulnerable” to
climate breakdown, the IPCC found, and half of the global population now
experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. In many areas,
the report warned, we are already reaching the limit to which we can adapt to
such severe changes, and weather extremes are “increasingly driving
displacement” of people in Africa, Asia, North, Central and South America, and
the south Pacific.

All of those impacts are set to increase rapidly, as we have failed to reverse
the 200-year trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions, despite more than 30
years of warnings from the IPCC, which published its first report in 1990.

The world heats up in response to the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so every year in which emissions continue to
rise eats up the available “carbon budget” and means much more drastic cuts will
be needed in future years.

Yet there is still hope of staying within 1.5C, according to the report. Hoesung
Lee, the chair of the IPCC, said: “This synthesis report underscores the urgency
of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still
secure a livable sustainable future for all.”

Temperatures are now about 1.1C above pre-industrial levels, the IPCC found. If
greenhouse gas emissions can be made to peak as soon as possible, and are
reduced rapidly in the following years, it may still be possible to avoid the
worst ravages that would follow a 1.5C rise.



Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading,
said: “Every bit of warming avoided due to the collective actions pulled from
our growing, increasingly effective toolkit of options is less worse news for
societies and the ecosystems on which we all depend.”

Guterres called on governments to take drastic action to reduce emissions by
investing in renewable energy and low-carbon technology. He said rich countries
must try to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as close as possible to
2040”, rather than waiting for the 2050 deadline most have signed up to.

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He said: “The climate timebomb is ticking. But today’s report is a how-to guide
to defuse the climate timebomb. It is a survival guide for humanity. As it
shows, the 1.5C limit is achievable.”



John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said: “Today’s
message from the IPCC is abundantly clear: we are making progress, but not
enough. We have the tools to stave off and reduce the risks of the worst impacts
of the climate crisis, but we must take advantage of this moment to act now.”

What is the IPCC AR6 synthesis report and why does it matter?
Read more


Monday’s “synthesis report” is the final part of the sixth assessment report
(AR6) by the IPCC, which was set up in 1988 to investigate the climate and
provide scientific underpinning to international policy on the crisis. The first
three sections of AR6, published between August 2021 and April 2022, covered the
physical science behind the climate crisis, and warned irreversible changes were
now almost inevitable; section two covered the impacts, such as the loss of
agriculture, rising sea levels, and the devastation of the natural world; and
the third covered the means by which we can cut greenhouse gases, including
renewable energy, restoring nature and technologies that capture and store
carbon dioxide.

The “synthesis report” contains no new science, but draws together key messages
from all of the preceding work to form a guide for governments. The next IPCC
report is not due to be published before 2030, making this report effectively
the scientific gold standard for advice to governments in this crucial decade.

The final section of AR6 was the “summary for policymakers”, written by IPCC
scientists but scrutinised by representatives of governments around the world,
who can – and did – push for changes. The Guardian was told that in the final
hours of deliberations at the Swiss resort of Interlaken over the weekend, the
large Saudi Arabian delegation, of at least 10 representatives, pushed at
several points for the weakening of messages on fossil fuels, and the insertion
of references to carbon capture and storage, touted by some as a remedy for
fossil fuel use but not yet proven to work at scale.

In response to the report, Peter Thorne, the director of the Icarus climate
research centre at Maynooth University in Ireland, said next year global
temperatures could breach the 1.5C limit, though this did not mean the limit had
been breached for the long term. “We will, almost regardless of the emissions
scenario given, reach 1.5C in the first half of the next decade,” he said. “The
real question is whether our collective choices mean we stabilise around 1.5C or
crash through 1.5C, reach 2C and keep going.”

Explore more on these topics
 * Climate crisis
 * Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
 * news

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