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Over the past few years, many countries have seen a dramatic rise in inflation due to a variety of factors, from pandemic shortages to the war in Ukraine. But even now, as inflation has fallen, prices continue to rise, albeit slowly. Politicians seeking to beat inflation often miss this subtle point, whether intentionally or not.
Don’t worry, you didn’t start reading it by mistake. economist. Importantly, we may soon see similar effects on the Earth’s climate. As we reported in “El Niño Ends After Year of Extreme Weather,” the El Niño weather pattern is coming to an end. Like the recent inflationary period, El Niño has seen record-breaking temperatures last nearly a year, causing a spike in the graph.
The problem is that just as prices continue to rise even when inflation falls, carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere will continue to cause temperatures to rise even without El Niño. Temperatures may drop over the next few years, but overall the planet is still warming at an alarming rate.
It’s hard to assess exactly how close we are to exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, a key limit for avoiding the worst consequences of climate change: Traditionally, climate scientists have looked at this over decades, meaning we only see the exceedance in retrospect.
At least there is some good news here. New analysis shows that we only need to count the number of years with average temperatures above 1.5°C (see “Three hot years mean over 1.5°C”). It turns out that we only need three years above 1.5°C to confirm we’ve exceeded 1.5°C. The bad news is that 2024 could be the first year.
As we have said many times before, despair is not the answer. Unlike inflation, climate spikes are somewhat predictable. The next El Niño is likely to occur two to seven years from now, and therefore almost certainly within this decade. Before it brings even more heat, the world needs to use this period to finally bend the curve on carbon emissions with a proper commitment to net zero by 2050. We would all benefit, and politicians might have something real to celebrate.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
