“Humans aren’t well wired to act on complex statistical risks. We care a lot more about the tangible present than the distant future. Many of us do that to the extreme—what behavioral scientists call hyperbolic discounting—which makes it particularly hard to grapple with something like climate change, where the biggest dangers are yet to come”. Reuters Planet Policy
A new study spells it out for humanity. A warming world will not be taking any prisoners.
The year 2100 has provided to much cover for those who want to kick the climate change time bomb down the road for the grandchildren to deal with. Instead, we have 17 years to reverse the damage from greenhouse gases or our fates will be sealed.
In their latest paper, published in the February issue of Nature Geoscience, Dr Philip Goodwin from the University of Southampton and Professor Ric Williams from the University of Liverpool have projected that if immediate action isn't taken, the earth's global average temperature is likely to rise to 1.5°C above the period before the industrial revolution within the next 17-18 years, and to 2.0°C in 35-41 years respectively if the carbonemission rate remains at its present-day value.
Through their projections, Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.
"Immediate action is required to develop a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future or, alternatively, prepare adaptation strategies for the effects of a warmer climate," said Dr Goodwin, Lecturer in Oceanography and Climate at Southampton. "Our latest research uses a combination of a model and historical data to constrain estimates of how long we have until 1.5°C or 2°C warming occurs. We've narrowed the uncertainty in surface warming projections by generating thousands of climate simulations that each closely match observational records for nine key climate metrics, including warming and ocean heat content."
Professor Williams, Chair in Ocean Sciences at Liverpool, added: "This study is important by providing a narrower window of how much carbon we may emit before reaching 1.5°C or 2°C warming. There is a real need to take action now in developing and adopting the new technologies to move to a more carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral future as we only have a limited window before reaching these warming targets." This work is particularly timely given the work this year of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a Special Report on the Impacts of global warming of 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.