Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku

The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded – even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary.

Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.

“The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5C is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5C line an accelerating way and that will continue until global emissions stop climbing.”

    • troed@fedia.io
      123·
      16 days ago

      Tell that to Michael Mann, perhaps one of the most distinguished climate scientists:

      “Actually, the warming of the planet is very much in line with early climate model predictions. Some impacts, such as ice sheet melt and sea level rise, and the slowdown of the ocean ‘conveyor belt’ are exceeding those predictions.” Current policies alone likely keep warming below 3°C (5.4°F), nowhere near the “worst-case” scenarios.

      https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2023/09/climate-doomism-disregards-science

      • kozy138@lemm.eeEnglish
        211·
        15 days ago

        These models always assume that direct carbon capture technologies will extract ridiculous amounts of the CO2 out of the atmosphere.

        Also 3C will be devastating as is though. That’s not including biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and rising sea levels.

        • Lauchmelder@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          Did you read the article?

          Current models don’t assume carbon capture technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, they assume interactions with the oceans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

          And yes, 3C will be devastating, but not doing anything will be more devastating, that’s also what the article says. If all lower goals are out of reach we should still aim for 3C because 3C is a lot better than 4C. Saying a certain temperature is devastating is not a useful comment in a scenario where that is the only good option left.

          We fucked up, now we must act based on the current situation.

        • troed@fedia.io
          414·
          15 days ago

          If you know better than Dr Mann perhaps you should publish a few papers?

          It sounds more like you’re one of those doomists he describes.