4°C global warming afoot if still blind eye

The agreement sets out a global plan of action involving 195 countries that participated in crafting the deal to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C. The agreement which is a bridge between today’s policies and climate-neutrality before the end of the century, is due to enter into force in 2020. While it sets a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, governments aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change. Prior to the Paris conference, countries submitted comprehensive national climate action plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but these are not enough to keep global warming below 2°C. It was thus agreed that governments would meet every 5 years to set more ambitious targets as required by science and track progress towards the long-term goal through a robust transparency and accountability system. Following the agreement, countries were tasked with the responsibility to ratify it using mechanisms that existed in their individual countries. The government of the United Republic of Tanzania is expected to brief the Parliament on the Paris Climate Agreement in its April session during which they will decide to ratify it or not. Fiji became the first country in the world to formally approve the deal when the country’s parliament voted unanimously to ratify the agreement in February this year, as reported by The Fiji Times. Fiji’s Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum introduced a motion in the Parliament, urging members to ratify the document ahead of the signing ceremony in New York City next month. Fiji’s represent a mere 0.04 per cent of global emissions, but many more countries are expected to follow its suit in ratifying the agreement ahead of the signing ceremony. The Paris agreement needs the signatures of 55 countries, representing at least 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions in order to take effect. The South Pacific low-lying archipelago, Fiji is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and Sayed-Khaiyum told the country’s Parliament that “tackling climate change was a major priority for the islands.” In the meantime, the world strives to cut its carbon emissions so as to slow global warming. But there is one country that has nothing to emit as all its emissions are absorbed by the country’s carbon sinks. Bhutan is not only carbon-neutral, it is also carbon negative. A recent report reveals that the country of about 750,000 people has set some impressive environmental benchmarks. Bhutan is not merely carbon neutral, it’s also a carbon sink, making it one of the few countries in the world to have negative carbon emissions. This means the country’s carbon sinks, such as its forests, absorb more carbon dioxide each year than its sources of pollution, such as factories emit. “According to recent figures, the country emits around 1.5 million tonnes of carbon annually, while its forests absorb over 6 million tonnes,” Carbon Neutral says proudly. According to the report, Bhutan is aiming for zero net greenhouse gas emissions, zero-waste by 2030 and to grow 100 per cent organic food by 2020. The Himalayan nation is currently 72 per cent forested and the constitution requires that no less than 60 per cent of it remains forested. It has even banned logging export. Bhutan also refuses to judge its success on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), instead use an index that measures Gross National Happiness (GNH). Many have credited its Gross National Happiness index as part of the reason for the country’s strong commitment to environmental stewardship rather than focusing solely on economic indicators, the index measures prosperity by giving equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing. While Bhutan is heading to become carbon-negative and other countries are struggling to limit global warming to 1.5C, a recent report by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that carbon dioxide levels ‘exploded’ in 2015, setting the highest level seen since end of Ice Age. In its report published by Eco Watch early this month NOAA says the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose 3.05 parts per million in 2015, the largest year-to-year increase ever recorded. It was the fourth year in a row that carbon dioxide concentrations grew by more than 2 parts per million. “Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they had in hundreds of thousands of years,” a leading scientist at NOAA said. Some of the spike in carbon dioxide levels can be attributed to last year’s monster El Niño event and the rest the scientists chalk up high levels of fossil fuel emissions. Carbon dioxide levels in the air, which contribute to climate change and extreme weather events, has increased more than 40 per cent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In another development, James Hansen and 18 leading climate experts have published a peer-reviewed version of their 2015 discussion paper on the dangers posed by unrestricted carbon pollution. The study adds to the growing body of evidence that the current global target or defense line embraced by the world - 2°C (3.6°F) total global warming - “could be dangerous” to humanity. That 2°C warming should be avoided at all costs is not news to people who pay attention to climate science, though it may be news to people who only follow popular media. Specifically, the new study titled “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming could be dangerous” warns that even stabilizing at that temperature might well lead to devastating glacial melt, multi-metre sea level rise and other related catastrophic impacts. “The study is significant not just because it is peer-reviewed, but because the collective knowledge about climate science in general and glaciology in particular among the co-authors is quite impressive,” says one of the experts. Based on both observations and analysis, science is clearly moving in the direction that 2°C warming is not “safe” for humanity. The fact that 2°C total warming is likely to shove the world into sea level rise of 10 feet or more has been obvious for a while now. “What has changed is our understanding of just how fast sea levels could rise. In the past two years, a number of major studies revealed that large parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are unstable and headed toward irreversible collapse - and some parts may have already passed the point of no return. Another 2015 study found out that global sea level rise since 1990 has been speeding up even faster than we knew,” says Hansen. There is a possibility that the world will hand young people and future generations a climate system that is practically out of their control. The world needs to understand the plausible worst-case scenario for climate change by the next century, something that the media and the IPCC have failed to deliver. The world needs to understand the “business as usual” set of multiple catastrophic dangers of 4°C if we don’t reverse the course now. It needs to understand the dangers of even 2°C warming. “We conclude that the message our climate science delivers to society, policymakers and the public alike is this: we have a global emergency. Fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions should be reduced as rapidly as practical,” Hansen says.