Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases special report on global warming targets

THE United Nations has released a “wildly alarming” report on climate change and given the world just a 10 year deadline to take action.

A SPECIAL report on global warming has been released today that provides a grim view on the world’s future.

It states that the world stands on the brink of failure when it comes to holding climate change to moderate levels and that there is only a decade to try and cut emissions.

All scenarios for keeping global warming to 1.5C would involve cutting the use of coal-powered electricity to practically nothing by 2050.

Ninety-one authors and review editors from 40 countries prepared the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and their verdict is that every extra bit of warming makes a difference.

The world has already warmed by about 1C above pre-industrial levels and is likely to reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.

The report is groundbreaking in that it looks at the impacts of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to 2C.

It shows that 1.5C is enough to unleash climate mayhem, and the pathways to avoiding an even hotter world require a swift and complete transformation not just of the global economy, but of society too.

Already there has been deadly heatwaves, wild fires and floods, along with superstorms swollen by rising seas.

“I don’t know how you can possibly read this and find it anything other than wildly alarming,” said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, referring to the draft summary.

WE NEED DRAMATIC REDUCTIONS

The United Nations panel released its report at midday and it makes clear that global warming of 1.5C would be a very difficult target to reach and cannot be achieved without carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.

Carbon emissions would need to be cut by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030. This would allow carbon emissions to reach “net zero” by around 2050.

For Australia’s coal industry, it’s a bleak future.

The report put four scenarios to reach the 1.5C target and all of them include a dramatic reduction in the use of coal for electricity generation to practically zero per cent by 2050.

The scenarios also require carbon dioxide removal, changes to agriculture and forestry land use, as well as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, to keep warming to 1.5C.

“Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” IPCC Working Group III co-chair Jim Skea said.

Actions taken between now and 2030 will be critical in order to have a chance of keeping global warming to 1.5C.

Allowing the global temperature to temporarily rise above or ‘overshoot’ 1.5C would mean a greater reliance on techniques that remove carbon from the air to return global temperature to below 1.5C by 2100. The effectiveness of such techniques are unproven at large scale and some may carry significant risks for sustainable development, the report notes.

At a press conference to launch the report IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said the document was one of the most important ever produced by the organisation.

Professor Mark Howden of the ANU’s Climate Change Institute said the report showed at current rates of temperature increases, the world will likely reach the 1.5C degrees global warming scenario by around 2040.

“At this point, there are very few practical pathways left that can keep warming to below 1.5C (and) very little we can do to turn the ship around,” Prof Howden said.

“But one of the key messages from this special report is the longer we leave taking action, the faster we’ll have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the more it will cost including through unwanted impacts of climate change.”

For the first time, the IPCC Special Report compares the risks presented by scenarios of 1.5C warming, with the 2C two degree warming scenario, showing extreme weather events, heat-related morbidity and food shortages will be substantially worse if the climate warms by an extra 0.5C.

“It is certainly possible to limit warming to 1.5C degrees, but it will be profoundly challenging and action taken in the next decade few years will be crucial,” Prof Howden said.

Professor Howden has just returned from the 48th Session of the IPCC in South Korea, where the report was approved. He is the vice-chair of the IPCC and is the most senior Australian climate expert involved in the compilation of the report.

The special report began as a request from the 195 nations that inked the Paris Agreement in 2015 on the 1.5C warming scenario. Three years and many drafts later, the answer has come in the form of a 400-page report — grounded in an assessment of 6,000 peer-reviewed studies.

REPORT IS A ‘WAKE-UP CALL’ FOR AUSTRALIA

Coral reef expert and Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) adviser Dr Scott Heron said the report confirmed Australia was on track to lose the Great Barrier Reef.

“The report shows at 2C warming, we would lose virtually all the world’s coral reefs from 2050 onwards,” Dr Heron said.

“The loss of the Great Barrier Reef and marine life, not to mention the more than 60,000 jobs it supports, is unfathomable.”

He said the stark reality was that even if global warming was limited to 1.5C most of the world’s coral reefs would be lost in the next 30 years, but at least some would be left.

“The latest information tells us that to protect half of the world’s coral reefs, we need to limit global temperature rise to 1.2C. This is worth fighting for,” he said.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said the report is an enormous wake-up call for Australian politicians and industry, and show they must put an end to burning coal, oil and gas.

“Climate damage is hurting Australia right now through worsening droughts, fire seasons and coral bleaching,” ACF chief executive officer Kelly O’Shanassy said.

“The IPCC is clear that even if we do limit global warming to 1.5 degrees there are significant implications for Australia. Warming at this level would significantly challenge the health of the Great Barrier Reef and other parts of our natural world, along with increasing the pressure of extreme weather on our communities.

“On current levels of global action, the planet will heat up by a disastrous 3C or more by the end of the century.”

Ms O’Shanassy said this scientific reality was being denied and ignored by many of Australia’s elected representatives and irresponsible parts of industry.

“Despite overwhelming evidence, they have delayed, wrecked and dismissed action to cut climate pollution for several decades,” she said.

INACTION FROM POLITICIANS IS ‘IMMORAL VANDALISM’

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 1.3 per cent to their highest levels in eight years, although Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the country will meet its Paris climate change target of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 by 2030.

In August the coalition dumped its National Energy Guarantee policy to legislate emissions reductions among electricity generators after Malcolm Turnbull lost the prime ministership. It was the closest thing Australia had to a climate change policy after it ditched former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard’s carbon pricing scheme.

Despite signing up to the Paris agreement, former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott is now suggesting Australia should withdraw from it.

Ms O’Shanassy said the policies of the coalition government were contributing to the problem.

“The Federal Coalition Government has failed to implement a cohesive, ambitious and economy-wide climate plan and has hitched its wagon to the coal industry — a key driver of the climate damage that is hurting us right now and is projected to get worse,” she said.

“This inaction is reckless and immoral vandalism of our planet and communities.

“There is no escaping the conclusions of the Special Report — we must take swift action to cut climate pollution, end the burning of coal, gas and oil, and accelerate the deployment of clean energy.”

Delegates and experts attend the opening ceremony of the 48th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Incheon on October 1, 2018. Picture: Jung Yeon-je/AFP

UN Environment Program executive director Erik Solheim described the report as being like a “deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen”.

“We have to put out the fire,” he said.

Government representatives spent last week going through the 22-page executive summary line-by-line in Incheon, South Korea.

Oil giant Saudi Arabia backed down at the last minute on Saturday from obstructing the adoption of the report.

At issue was a passage in the summary stating that voluntary national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will fail to limit warming to 1.5C.

Current pledges would at best yield a 3C world by century’s end, far above the 2C cap mandated by the Paris Agreement.

These so-called “nationally determined contributions” run from 2020 to 2030 for most countries, including Saudi Arabia, and to 2025 for a few others.

The passage goes on to note that capping global warming under 1.5C “can only be achieved if global CO2 emissions start to decline well before 2030”.

As a consequence, scientists and climate activists have called on countries to ratchet up their carbon-cutting pledges as soon as possible.

— With AFP