The Latest IPCC Report Says We ’re Probably Going to Pass the 1.5°C Climate Threshold. What’s Next?

Three years ago the United Nations climate science body issued a landmark report warning that the planet was on track to blow past efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a threshold that it warned would bring catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change. But in that same report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that many paths remained open for us to limit that damage—so long as we acted immediately. On Monday, the IPCC published a new document with a far less optimistic frame. In it, the group says that the pathway to limit warming to the 1.5°C mark has narrowed and lays out only one plausible scenario to meet that goal—one that would require an extraordinary level of action, and even then, would offer no guarantee. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “It is still possible to forestall many of the most dire impacts,” says Ko Barrett, a vice chair of the IPCC, and deputy assistant administrator for research at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “But it really requires unprecedented transformational change, [and] rapid and immediate reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions.” Documents like this can be disheartening—in fact, they probably should be. The report, the first in a string the IPCC plans to release in the coming months as part of its sixth Assessment Report, covers the latest science on physical impacts of climate chang...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate Source Type: news