image credit: Changing Alisa Singer, Used by IPCC for 6th Climate Report
On Monday 9th August, 2021 saw the release of the 6th Climate assessment by the IPCC. It is a grim, sobering read. Also, it is a staggering 3,949 pages long!
So in a short simple summary.
If we continue to not stop our carbon omissions then it will lead to devastating lives and disrupting nearly all of us humans, in one way or another.
Simply put, if we do not get Carbon Dioxide out of our energy mix as fast as we can we are, I quote from the report:
– facing increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost”
– I go on in another quote “Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events”
– Then “increasing CO2 emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere”
– Finally, to really make my day, “Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level”.
This leaves you grappling with what the consequences will be and what the responses of all those in a position to make the dramatic level of changes we need to irradicate all human-created carbon dioxide.
My immediate reaction is, can we honestly support extracting fossil fuels and Oil and Gas companies need to “front up” to what they need to do to make massive, effective and fast changes while they have some of the control still in their hands.
Can we continue to debate gradual shifts?
How can we recognize and mobilize real sustainable energy transitions based only on clean energy?.
Do we start calling this the Climate Emergency, which is what it actually is?
We are caught in a pandemic today, we need to learn some hard lessons from this but as the IPCC states it is “unequivocal that human influence has (and is) warming the atmosphere, ocean and land”
The scale is unprecedented these extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, will continue to strengthen until we ADDRESS climate change.
We really need to look for deep, deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions in the coming years, perhaps not decades as we have previously felt
A first reaction upping the fight to bring about real change.
I read one view: If they, the Governments and Policy Holders and the Fossil fuel producers don’t act quickly enough and COP26 ends in an unsatisfactory fudge, then the courts might become more involved.
“We’re not going to let this report be shelved by further inaction. Instead, we’ll be taking it with us to the courts,” said Kaisa Kosonen, senior political adviser at Greenpeace Nordic.
“By strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme weather, the IPCC has provided new, powerful means for everyone everywhere to hold the fossil fuel industry and governments directly responsible for the climate emergency.
“One only needs to look at the recent court victory secured by NGOs against Shell to realise how powerful IPCC science can be.”
I also draw some comfort from this, Scientists being scientists are usually on the side of caution.
In the last report, in 2013, this ranged from 1.5C to 4.5C, with no best estimate.
This time around, the range has narrowed and the authors opt for 3C as their most likely figure. That is the bad and sad news as it is DOUBLE where we must be, aiming for 1.5C!
Why is this important?
“We are now able to constrain that with a good degree of certainty and then we employ that to really make far more accurate predictions,” said Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds, and an author on the report.
“So, that way, we know that net-zero will really deliver.”
Well there you go, simply deliver net-zero and we all will be saved. Has anyone seen the master plan yet?
Is this the beginning of the RIP of our world? It seems devastating?
No, but the likelihood that perhaps Humans in the form we are, how we live and function might.
So will we need to gear ourselves up for another “for and against” debate polarizing and neutralizing the urgent efforts needed? We can’t afford to wait, we need to act.
The price of inaction affects us all but to mobilize the World in today’s environment- I really feel a little helpless in seeing the way forward as the world stands in the hands of human behaviour.
No energy transition will be achieved without invention and innovation, yet we are failing badly at present to fund research, development and deployment. We are losing the race to stop our planet warming as our innovative human endeavours are not at the level they should be, or we simply lack the “will” to make the changes we so desperately need to undergo to protect our planet.
