By Paul Homewood
h/t HotScot
In its annual review, the UN says the gap between carbon cutting plans and the reductions required to keep temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius is “alarmingly high”.
Pledges made so far cover only one-third of the cuts needed by 2030 to keep below that goal, the review warns.
Even if all the promises are kept, temperatures might still rise by 3 degrees by 2100.
However, cost-effective options are available that can close the gap.
The UN has published an annual analysis of emissions every year since 2010.
This year’s instalment re-iterates the point that current pledges are insufficient to keep within the temperature limits agreed in the Paris climate pact….
By 2030 the UN says that the global scale of emissions needed to keep within the 2-degree path should not exceed 42 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent. Based on the promises made, this report projects a gap of 11 to 13 gigatonnes, while for the 1.5-degree target, the gap is 16 to 19 gigatonnes.
“The Paris agreement boosted climate action, but momentum is clearly faltering,” said Dr Edgar E Gutiérrez-Espeleta, Costa Rica’s minister for environment and president of the 2017 UN Environment Assembly.
“We face a stark choice: up our ambition, or suffer the consequences.”
Ominously, the report warns that if the emissions gap is not closed by 2030 then “it is extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2 degrees C can still be reached”.
The report suggests that signatories of the Paris accord must significantly increase their ambitions in the new and updated national plans that will have to be submitted by 2020.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41802982
I don’t know why Matt McGrath is so surprised. If he had been following this blog, he would have known two years ago that the Paris Agreement was not worth the paper it was written on.
He also shows this graph:
You can ignore the Baseline, as this is simply a projection of the Business As Usual forecasts, which developing countries have artificially inflated to make their INDCs look better.
For some reason, McGrath also chooses to ignore the pre-2025 numbers, which would have shown that emissions will rise substantially from 49 GtCO2e, even under the Paris trajectory.
Or, for that matter, the post-2030 ones, which show that under the Paris Agreement National Plans emissions will carry on rising rapidly:
https://www.climateinteractive.org/programs/scoreboard/
Unfortunately we are now in for another few years of being bombarded with propaganda from the BBC and the rest of the media. Year after year, there will be more climate conferences, all leading up to the next submission of national plans in 2020.
I make three predictions now:
1) The BBC will hail the 2020 plans as world saving.
2) The next set of national plans will do no more than kick the can down the road for another five years.
3) In 2022, the UN will be telling us that we need to take drastic action by 2025, if we are to keep temperatures within the 2C target range.
