Human-caused global warming has continued to increase at an “unprecedented rate” and has reached “an all-time high.” This is the alarming message that 50 leading scientists from around the world have wanted to launch about the pressing problem of the massive emission of greenhouse gases. In figures, we spew 54 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, which has caused temperatures to rise by an average of 1.14 degrees in the last decade. The consequences are well known: intense droughts, water shortages, fires, rising sea levels, floods, melting ice at the poles, catastrophic storms, a decline in biodiversity… “This is the critical decade for climate change,” they stress.
Greenhouse gases – mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas – act like a blanket around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures at a faster rate than on the last two millennia. Specifically, each of the past four decades has been hotter than any since 1850. This problem began to rise to prominence more than a quarter century ago, in 1995, with the first of the annual climate change conferences organized by the UN. That year it took place in Berlin. Two years later, in Kyoto, an agreement was reached for the first time to reduce the emission of these gases, although it did not enter into force until 2005. Ten years later, in Paris, the target of 1.5 degrees was set at global warming to be achieved by 2050. The experts have now met to take stock of the results ahead of the new summit, which will take place in December in the United Arab Emirates.
Key climate indicators
And the balance, as has been said, is not very encouraging because we are not doing enough. Since the publication of the report of the Sixth Assessment Working Group 1 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just two years ago, greenhouse gas emissions have increased by one billion tons on average, global warming man-made has gone from 1.07 to 1.14 degrees and the remaining carbon budget – an estimate of the amount of carbon that can be released into the atmosphere to have a 50/50 chance of sustaining the rise in temperature global within 1.5 degrees – has been cut in half, from 500 billion to 250 billion tons.
These data will be updated in a platform created by the University of Leeds. And it is that experts insist on the need to keep these indicators up to date in order to adopt the necessary measures. The sooner the better. “We need to be agile in the face of climate change. We need to change policy and approaches in light of the latest evidence on the state of the climate system. Time is no longer on our side. Access to up-to-date information is of vital importance”, they underline. “Decisions made now will have an impact on how much temperatures will rise and the degree and severity of impacts we will see as a result,” they conclude.
A week ago, another group of experts warned that “the Earth is already in danger.” They explained in a study published in the journal ‘Nature’ that they had carried out a medical check-up on the planet to conclude that “safe and fair limits” had been exceeded in five critical areas. One of them was global warming. The rest were biodiversity, the quality of fresh water, fertilizers -their abuse or, conversely, their scarcity, which prevents crops from getting ahead- and air pollution. “Unless a transformation occurs, irreversible tipping points and widespread impacts on human well-being are most likely inevitable,” they stressed.
