Arguments
2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #50
Posted on 17 December 2022 by John Hartz
Story of the Week
1.5 and 2°C: A Journey Through the Temperature Target That Haunts the World
Seven years have passed since the Paris Agreement, the most important climate pact to date. Everyone knows the limits of warming, but few know their origins and drivers.
Translated from the original published at climatica.lamarea.com.
Two numbers. One long-term goal. In 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed to “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”. It was at COP21, where the Paris Agreement, the most important climate pact to date, was enshrined.
That paragraph, in article 2, paragraph 2.a., marked a before and after. Every policy, law, regulation, study, analysis, proposal or action that has the climate crisis in mind is built on the basis of those two figures: 1.5 and 2. They are our lighthouse. But why are both numbers so important? And what is even less well known: where do they come from?
The answer is neither simple nor short. Like a chicken and egg dilemma, who came up with these goals first, politics or science? In the following lines, we will try to unravel their origins and understand how two numerical targets have ended up guiding and influencing the planet.
Just as the legend that babies come from storks from Paris is not true, temperature limits did not magically appear during the summit in the French capital. Nor did they appear at the same time, nor has the same language always been used to refer to them, as will be seen below.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on DeSmog International.
1.5 and 2°C: A Journey Through the Temperature Target That Haunts the World by Edu Robaina, DeSmog International, Dec 11, 2022
Links posted on Facebook
Sun, Dec 11, 2022
- Climate change could force 1.2 billion to move by 2050. Is the world even remotely ready?, Analysis by Robert Muggah, Mongabay, Dec 9, 2022
- Renewables Are on Pace to Beat Coal as the Largest Power Source by 2025 by Camille Bond, Environment, E&E News/Scientific American, Dec 8, 2022
- Climate Change is Driving Millions to the Precipice of a ‘Raging Food Catastrophe’ by Georgina Gustin, Justice, Inside Climate News, Dec 11, 2022
Mon, Dec 12, 2022
- Seagrass is Key in Fighting Climate Change: How to Save it by Grace Smith, Society, Impakter, Dec 10, 2022
- 1.5 and 2°C: A Journey Through the Temperature Target That Haunts the World by Edu Robaina, DeSmog International, Dec 11, 2022
- New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion by Seth Borenstein, AP News, Dec 9, 2022
Tue, Dec 13, 2022
- Biodiversity: 'A victim of global warming and one of the major tools to fight against it' by Cyrielle Cabot, Environment, France 24, Dec 11, 2022
- How do floating wind turbines work? 5 companies just won the first US leases for building them off California’s coast by Matthew Lackner, Environment & Energy, The Conversation US, Dec 8, 2022
- Hotter, rainier, wetter — climate change is dramatically transforming the Arctic, report finds by Rachel Ramirez, CNN, Dec 13, 2022
Wed, Dec 14, 2022
- For better or worse, billionaires now guide climate policy by Evan Halper, Climate, Washington Post, Dec 12, 2022
- The surprising reasons parts of Earth are warming more slowly by Scott Dance, Niko Kommenda & Simon Ducroquet, Climate, Washington Post, Dec 14, 2022
- Tempted to joke about global warming amid a blizzard? Here's what experts say about that. by Elizabeth Weise, Climate Change, USA Today, Dec 13, 2022
Thu, Dec 15, 2022
- What to know about DOE’s fusion milestone by Peter Behr, Energy, Politico, Dec 13, 2022
- These are the 7 actions we need to take to get back on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C by Charlotte Edmond, Climate Change, World Economic Forum, Dec 14, 2022
- We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting. by SkS Team, Skeptical Science, Dec 14, 2022
Fri, Dec 16, 2022
- Race to Develop Carbon Removal Technology Begins with Record Funding by Corbin Hiar & Carlos Anchondo, E&E News/Scientific American, Dec 14, 2022
- Quiz: What’s the Best Way to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint?, Opinion by Sander van der Linden, New York Times, Dec 15, 2022
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2022 by Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Skeptical Science, Dec 15, 2022
Sat, Dec 17, 2022
- Computer modelling predicts climate change causing cascading animal 'co-extinctions' by Eugene Boisvert & Anisha Pillarisetty, ABC News (AU), Dec 17, 2022
- Big Oil Companies Are Bullies That ‘Want to Be Seen as Good Guys’, Opinion by David Wallace-Wells, New York Times, Dec 15, 2022
- The water south of Greenland has been cooling, so what causes that? by Stefan Rahmstorf, RealClimate, Dec 17, 2022
Thank you for curating another excellent set of recent news items.
The Story of the Week is very informative. And it contains a gem: the indication that in 1990 there was a rational evidence-based presentation indicating that warming above 1.0 C would be entering unsafe, increasingly risky and harder to predict climate territory.
What is not presented, but is clear from the evidence, is that the SSP studied pathways were constrained to 'not harm economic perceptions that have developed and not restrict the development of increased perceptions of prosperity'. That constraint of understanding was/is part of the systemic problem that needs to be corrected.
Said another way a sustainable effective solution to the problem will require 'the thinking and investigation, the science, to be unrestricted'. There should be no protection for harmful developed economic interests. even if opening up that line of thinking would more significantly annoy some already annoyed powerful wealthy people. That harmful 'protection of economic perceptions' can also be seen to have harmfully compromised the interactions at the Diversity COP15.
The 'more common sense awareness and understanding regarding climate impacts' should be that by 1990 a substantial amount of developed perceptions of economic prosperity and status were built and based on harmful unsustainable activity. It was harmful at that time to deny the need to reduce the amount of harmful developed activity. It was harmful to hope that continued, and growing, harmful economic activity only being displaced by 'cheaper and more popular' technological developments would 'achieve the required limit of harm to future generations'. The situation is worse today, and continues to be made worse, because of excusing already more than adequately wealthy people who continue pursuing more personal benefit from understandably harmful activity.
That common sense understanding is still far from being a common enough understanding to effectively govern and correct the harmful over-development. In spite of all the evidence of that common sense understanding regarding the systemic problems developed by 'popularity and profitability being the measures of what is desirable and acceptable', many people continue to be free to act on harmful misunderstandings. And they are fighting harder to resist learning that important lesson from recent history, a lesson that has tragically been able to be learned repeatedly throughout history.