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The world is on the brink of 1.5°C warming due to carbon dioxide emissions
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It is clear that the world is on track to exceed the global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and plans to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to warm it up again are attracting increasing attention. However, there is no guarantee that this will be achieved. Even if achieved, some changes are irreversible.
They say “death is irreversible” joeli rogerzi At Imperial College London. After studying various “overshoot” scenarios, he and his colleagues warn that we now need to focus on urgent emissions cuts to limit warming.
Their research says there are at least five major problems with the idea of meeting climate change goals and then cooling the planet again. The first is that many such scenarios give a misleading picture of the uncertainties and risks involved.
For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its last major report, predicted that the world could rise by 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, exceeding the Paris threshold by just 0.1°C. We considered shooting scenarios. agreement. However, because it is uncertain how global temperatures will change in response to a given amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the emissions levels assumed in this scenario would actually result in a warming of up to 3.1°C. Possibly.
“For the same emissions level, there is about a 1 in 10 chance that warming will exceed 2°C,” Rogelzi says. “There is a 1 in 10 chance that a potential existential threat will occur.”
The second problem is that even if we stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere, there is no guarantee that so-called net-zero emissions will stop…
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Source: www.newscientist.com