The report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarizes the output of this UN working group over the past five years, and brings together some 10,000 pages of dense scientific information. This synthesis is 37 pages long and its message is blunt: consuming fossil fuels threatens human well-being and the stability of much of life on Earth, and may ruin the chances of preventing the most serious impacts. The new document completes the “X-ray” made by scientists on the state of science in this matter.
“This report is a wake-up call to massively accelerate climate efforts in all countries, all sectors and all timeframes,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a statement on the report’s release.
Climate risks have only increased. “Evidence for observed changes in extremes such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and in particular their attribution to human influence, has become even stronger” since the fifth IPCC cycle ended in 2014. , the scientists have written.
Countries undoubtedly have the capacity to limit future destruction: “Feasible, effective, and low-cost options for mitigation and adaptation are already available, with differences between systems and regions,” it adds.
Solar and wind power, electric vehicles and green urban infrastructure bring additional benefits such as lower levels of air pollution. Climate adaptation has the potential to increase food security and biodiversity conservation.
Guterres has called on developed countries to speed up their plans and bring forward their pledges to end emissions from 2050 to 2040. As part of that plan, he wants no new coal plants by 2030, an end to coal in rich countries that same year, and retirement everywhere by 2040. He also calls for “ceasing all licensing and funding for new coal projects.” oil and gas”, according to the conclusions of the International Energy Agency.
Below is a summary of the six previous reports that serve as a basis.
The climate crisis is becoming widespread in all regions of the planet, where the effects of extreme weather are spreading rapidly and intensely. This was indicated by the first of the three reports that make up the sixth assessment of warming prepared by group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and which now closes with the summary document. Introduced in August 2021
1) Many of the observed changes in the climate system are unprecedented in hundreds or even thousands of years, and some of the changes (caused by greenhouse gas emissions), such as sea level rise or continental and polar melting will be irreversible for thousands of years.
2) Only strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases could mitigate climate change under way. Such action would have immediate air quality benefits; But even under these circumstances, stabilizing temperatures and the climate system could take 20 to 30 years, according to IPCC Working Group 1, which has summarized and assessed the physical knowledge bases on warming.
3. Human activities have raised the temperatures on the Earth’s surface by 1.07 ºC (in the period 2010-2019 compared to 1850-1900); the glaciers have been receding since the 1990s; The Arctic sea ice loses an average of 40% of surface area in September compared to the period 1979-1988, and the rise in sea level already reaches 3.7 millimeters per year between 2006 and 2018.
4) Likewise, the climatic bands move towards the poles in both hemispheres and spring has lasted more than two days per decade since the 1950s in non-tropical areas of the northern hemisphere.
Human-induced climate change is causing “pervasive and dangerous alterations in nature and is affecting the lives of billions of people around the world.” And all this, despite efforts to reduce risks. It is the second installment of this sixth assessment of climate change, presented in February 2022.
1) The world faces multiple unavoidable climate hazards in the next two decades as a result of a warming of 1.5 ºC (now the increase is 1.09 ºC), Between 3,300 and 3,600 million people live in vulnerable areas of the planet to climate change. People and ecosystems least able to adapt to these changes are the most affected.
2) The increase in heat waves, droughts and floods are already exceeding the tolerance thresholds of plants and animals, which causes massive mortality in species; among them trees and corals.
3) Approximately half of the species assessed globally have moved towards the poles or, on land, towards higher elevations, in their attempt to climate adaptation. There have been losses in hundreds of local species, due to the increase in the magnitude of the extremes of heat; and mass mortality events of species on land and in the ocean have been documented, as well as losses of kelp forests.
4) The risks of waterborne and foodborne illnesses have increased regionally from climate-sensitive aquatic pathogens (including Vibrio or toxic substances from harmful freshwater cyanobacteria).
Scientists call for humanity to corner fossil fuels to address the climate crisis. They are convinced that without an immediate and profound reduction in gas emissions in all sectors of activity, limiting warming to 1.5ºC –as established in the Paris agreement- and preventing climate catastrophe are far from humanity’s reach. It is the third part of the sixth IPCC assessment, presented in April 2022.
1) Achieving a limitation of warming to around 1.5°C would require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2025 at the latest and be reduced by 43% by 2030,s
2) Facing climate change requires far-reaching, systemic transformations in all sectors of society (lifestyles, cities, industries, consumption patterns, land uses and finances), particularly those that consume the most and contaminate.
3) “A substantial reduction in the use of fossil fuels” (coal, oil and gas) is required, as well as the implementation of transformational changes to favor renewable energy, an increase in energy efficiency and encourage electrification, as well as the use of clean emerging fuels (such as green hydrogen).
4) Having adequate policies, infrastructure and technologies to enable changes in our lifestyle and behavior “can lead to an emission reduction of between 40 and 70% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Global warming has among its most obvious effects a massive thaw in practically all of the Earth’s frozen layers. The result is a melting of glaciers and other frozen surfaces that brings with it a rise in sea levels. A planet with less ice in the future will make it more dangerous, with coastal territories more exposed (to rising waters, erosion, marine intrusion, to the loss of valuable coastal ecosystems). The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, of September 2019, said it.
1) Some 680 million people (10% in 2010) live in low-lying coastal areas and this figure will reach 1 billion in the year 2100.
2) The average level of sea water has risen 0.16 meters between 1902 and 2015. But this elevation has increasing rates (3.6 millimeters per year between 2006 and 2015), something unprecedented in the last century. It is 2.5 times more than that of the period 1901-1990 (1.4 millimeters per year). By the end of the century (2081-2100) the rise in sea level will oscillate between 0.30 meters and 0.43 meters in a very optimistic scenario (always in relation to the period 1985-2005). But if gas emissions continue unbridled, that elevation will be between 0.71 meters and 0.84 meters.
3) The greatest vulnerability is for low-altitude territories, coral reef environments, islands, atolls, low-altitude arctic areas. “The limits of adaptation have been reached,” stresses the report.
4) Ice has receded in the Arctic Ocean at a rate of 12.3% per decade since 1979; and the snow in the Arctic lands does the same with a rate of 13.5% per decade. And the temperatures in the permafrost are rising (0.29 degrees in just nine years: 2007-2016). The forecast is that between 2015 and 2100, the mass of glaciers will recede between 18% and 36%, depending on the scenario derived from the volume of gas emissions released into the atmosphere.
The experts consulted by the UN propose to put the planet (and the human being) on ??a diet. More plant-based foods. And meat consumption associated with low CO2 emissions. It’s your recipe.
It is impossible to maintain safe temperature levels if there is not also a transformation in the food production model and in the management of the planet’s soils and lands. This was indicated by the Soils and Climate Change report approved by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2018-
1) Agriculture, forestry and other activities linked to land use already contribute 23% of all the greenhouse gases that warm the planet. In addition, if the emissions related to the entire food production system (transformation, transport, waste…) were also counted, the contribution of this area could reach up to 37% of the net contribution of total emissions. In parallel, between 25-30% of the food produced is lost or becomes waste.
2) Soils, vegetation cover and forests have been able to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than they themselves released between 2007 and 2016 (with a final balance of 6 Gt CO2 per year, which have been fixed and neutralized). But this absorption capacity is only 29% of the total CO2 emissions thrown into the atmosphere, given the increasing human activities. And there are no full guarantees that soil will continue to be a net carbon sink, as climate change disrupts natural systems.
3) The intensive impacts of agriculture and the food production system have aggravated soil erosion and reduced the amount of organic matter present in the land. Practices such as organic soil improvement, erosion control, efficient management of fertilization or the use of genetically improved varieties -to tolerate heat or drought- are recommended options.
4) The report advocates the promotion of balanced diets, plant-based foods, such as large grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, as well as “foods of animal origin” but associated with “resilient, sustainable and low-calorie” productive systems. Emissions of greenhouse gases”.
Experts foresee more pronounced impacts on most of the planet with a temperature increase of 2ºC compared to the 1.5ºC scenario. Preventing this warming threshold from being exceeded would require rapid, “far-reaching and unprecedented” changes to the energy and economic model. This is indicated in the special report Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, from the IPCC, of ??August 2019.
1) The rise of the sea would be between 0.27 m and 0.77 m by 2100 (compared to the period 1986-2005) if the increase in temperatures is contained to 1.5 ºC. This represents an elevation of 0.1 meters less than in a warming of 2ºC. With a rise of 1.5 ºC and not 2 ºC, there would be 10 million fewer people exposed to these risks, says the study.
2) With a warming of 1.5ºC, the probability that the Arctic will run out of sea ice in summer is one in 100 years; On the other hand, if the increase of 2ºC is reached, the frozen layer would lose one summer every decade.
3) Reef corals, very sensitive to the effects of warmer waters, would see between 70% and 90% of their populations destroyed in the first hypothesis, while they would virtually disappear with an additional 2ºC.
4) To contain the increase at 1.5 ºC and stabilize the climate, CO2 emissions produced by man should drop by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 and even continue on its downward path until reaching a net balance of zero emissions by the year 2050. This could be achieved with systems for the neutralization, capture and sequestration of CO2 from the atmosphere (forest sinks, geoengineering). If the goal were to contain the temperature at 2ºC, emissions should drop by 20% in 2030 but that zero balance of missions would not be achieved until 2075.
