Despite the speeches made and the good resolutions taken in recent years, nothing is really improving in the facts. According to the IPCC report, the global average temperature rise has reached + 1.09ºC over the past decade (2011-2020) and it will continue …
In the latest IPCC report published on August 9, 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted the worst yet again, announcing that even by limiting global warming, natural disasters are expected to increase in the coming years.
What is in the IPCC report?
This report provides the most advanced and recent knowledge in climate science. It confirms the notorious influence of man on the climate which is changing all over the world and faster than expected.
Human activity has transformed the planet definitively. Not only do we no longer have the possibility of going back but, and it is even more discouraging, whatever we do, the future of the climate is already written for the next 20 years.
The continued rise for several decades in greenhouse gas emissions (starting with CO2 and methane) and their increasing concentration in the atmosphere have “probably” contributed to a warming of 1 to 2ºC.
Faced with this, the influence of solar activity and of volcanic activity on the average temperature of the planet would be minimum, between -0.1ºC and 0.1ºC. At the same time, other human factors, such as aerosols, have contributed to an estimated cooling between 0 and 1ºC.
Only note of hope : Rapid, large-scale and sustainable emission reductions could limit climate change. In twenty or thirty years, global temperatures could stabilize. No turning back possible, but as the police say: we could “fix the crime scene” if the necessary was done …
As was the case with previous reports, the IPCC insists on the need to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C. Scientists stress the importance of acting now for the planet to try toreverse and to prevent, as much as possible, consequences which will be (anyway) massive.
What’s the point of crying wolf?
The IPCC report evokes a decadent version of Aesop’s fable, ” The boy who cried wolf“. In this fable, the young shepherd gets into the habit of “crying wolf” to call the villagers to help, when there is no danger on the horizon. But the day the wolf really decides to attack the herd, the boy may cry out for help: we believe in a new subterfuge on his part and no one comes to the rescue!
the IPCC cry wolf and few are those who come to the rescue! Yet everyone knows full well that the danger is imminent. It is even already too late… We have a much clearer picture of the past, present and future climate, and we know where we are going, what could be done and how we should prepare.
Read also:
2 ° C, what does that change for the planet?
A little greenhouse cocktail?
The tree will fall (deforestation is in full swing)
The oceans are heating up, so what?
Acting for the environment takes time …
However, it’s “business as usual”. The schedule is tightening and our societies are still running 80% with fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil). The wolf is going to feast …
At the end of 2015 (six years already), theParis climate agreement however aimed to avoid a change climatic dangerous by limiting global warming to a level below + 2 ° C and, if possible limited to +1.5 ° C compared to the end of the 19th century, i.e. the pre-industrial era ( 1850-1900).
The future is already written
Unsurprisingly, the IPCC report underlines that greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are at the origin of multiple phenomena:
- Ocean acidification,
- Melting glaciers and ice floes,
- Rise in the average level of the oceans (+0.2 meters between 1911 and 2018),
- Increase in extreme weather episodes (heat waves, cyclones, periods of drought),
- Average increase in precipitation.
A significant part of these changes is already become irreversible.
Extreme events such as those which recently hit Europe (floods in Germany and Belgium, heatwave in Greece, forest fires in Turkey and France, etc.) are likely to become even more violent if greenhouse gas emissions do not decrease drastically rapidly.
This sixth assessment cycle should also give rise to two complementary volumes of this IPCC report, on the climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (February 2022) on the one hand, and climate change mitigation (March 2022) first. The general summary report is scheduled for September 2022.
