Fact check: Have we really avoided the ‘worst case’ climate change scenarios?
Humans have managed to avert ‘worst-case’ climate change scenarios, according to a new study circulating online.
Global warming of 4 to 5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures is no longer looking plausible, say the authors at University of Colorado Boulder, and the 2°C upper limit of the Paris Agreement goal is still within reach.
Sounds like good news, right? The bad news is that the study - published last week in Environmental Research Letters - has been widely discredited by climate experts, along with lead author Roger Pielke Jr.
“Leading climate scientists publishing in more prominent venues have demonstrated that Pielke (and others making this argument) is simply wrong,” acclaimed climatologist Michael E. Mann tells Euronews Green.
Historically, Roger Pielke Jr has been one of the people underplaying climate impacts. https://t.co/Lgla3AklakThis research focuses on the 2C Paris goal (not 1.5C) https://t.co/ADbNcOlQ11seems ballpark to other studies I've seen
Others pointed out on Twitter that the Paris Agreement aims to limit warming to “well below 2°C”, after the study was shared in the Daily Mail and a handful of other outlets.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was “code red” for humanity, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said last summer.
More than 200 scientists using 14,000 peer-reviewed papers worked on the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), before it was approved by 195 member governments. They found that Earth's temperature will almost definitely reach the critical threshold of 1.5°C within the next 20 years.
Without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, even limiting warming to 2°C will be beyond reach, the authors warned.
Looking into
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