Doomsday UN report warns of apocalyptic climate change
World must ‘wake up’ and act to curb climate change before it’s too late to stop it, says devastating UN report
THE world must ‘wake up’ and act on climate change following a landmark report which warned that a target of limiting global warming to 1.5C will be breached within two decades.
Following devastating flash floods in Germany and wildfires in Greece, the United Nations report says climate change is already affecting every part of the globe.
Just weeks away from the UN Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, when world leaders will travel to Britain, scientists said a sea level rise of two metres by the end of the century ‘cannot be ruled out’.
UN chief Antonio Guterres described the report as a ‘code red for humanity’.
The stark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also warns:
O Climate change is already causing droughts and more frequent, more intense heatwaves;
O Once-a-century coastal flooding events could happen every year in many areas by 2100;
O The Arctic could be practically free of summer sea ice in September
in at least one year before 2050;
The sea level rise caused by climate change is irreversible and it will continue for centuries;
But every tonne of CO2 matters, and our actions now can still protect against further damage.
Environment Minister Eamon Ryan has now warned that ‘doing nothing is not an option’, and that urgent action is needed.
The report examines increased flooding as a result of climate change, drawing, in part, on a separate 2016 report about damage to infrastructure in Cork caused by floods. That report, written by a flood risk management company in the Netherlands and Future Analytics Consulting in Fitzwilliam
Square, Dublin, examined how floods in Cork have caused ‘significant disruption to health service provisions, interruption of water and power supplies, and damage to roads and other transportation infrastructure, affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people over a prolonged period of weeks.’
The UN report also notes that it relied on rainfall data provided by Irish students for information in several of its chapters.
‘Undergraduate students have also been recruited to successfully digitise rainfall data in Ireland. Such observations are an invaluable source of weather and climate information for the early historical period that continues to expand the digital archives which underpin observational datasets used across several chapters,’ it notes.
Overall, the UN report says temperatures will continue to rise until mid century and without major reductions in greenhouse gases, they will exceed both the 1.5C and 2C limits set by countries in the Paris climate treaty over the course of this century.
Mr Ryan said that he believes the changes that are needed will make
Rainfall data from Irish students
Ireland a ‘better’ country. ‘It’s that scale of change, that scale of ambition is what we need,’ the Green Party leader told RTÉ.
‘The science is now everclear, unequivocal: that if we don’t make these changes, the cost of inaction, the consequences of not bringing our emissions down are beyond compare. It’s our future that we’re talking about.’
Ireland’s Climate Act was passed in recent weeks, with the Government pledging to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and cut emissions by 50% in the next nine years. The Government is also set to publish a climate action plan. Peter Thorne, an author of the UN report and professor at Maynooth University, said the key message from the assessment on climate change is that humans are driving warming – but have the ability to change that.
He said: ‘It’s not a nice message overall. The fundamental message is we know [the planet] has warmed, we know it’s due to us, but we also know we have the future in our hands. It’s the last piece that is key, that we don’t take away a feeling of defeat but it’s a call to arms that we still can limit climate change but we need to work incredibly hard to do so, and climate needs to be at the heart of all our decision-making.’
Mr Thorne said the targets set out in new Irish legislation are in line with the global requirements that would limit warming to close to 1.5C. ‘The open question is whether the ambition called for in the Climate Act can be met in reality,’ he said. ‘Passing an Act is one thing; now we need to see sustained action.’
The bombshell report piles pressure on the UK’s Cop26 president, Alok Sharma, who is urging coalhungry countries such as China and India to cut down and pushing for net zero pledges from seven G20 nations which have not already made them. He is also aiming to resurrect a promise for wealthier countries to raise $100billion to help developing countries cope with climate change.
The report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), approved by 195 member governments, marks a striking change of language. An IPCC review in 1995 suggested only a ‘discernible human influence’ on global climate. But the new report says: ‘It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.’ Global surface temperatures have risen faster since 1970 than during any other period over at least the 2,000 years, according to the experts.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin TD Darren O’Rourke claimed carbon taxes were not key to solving the problem. ‘Fundamental to the effort around climate change needs to be bringing people with us. It is clear in our mind that measures that are punitive – carbon taxes, increases in fuel and electricity prices – will not do and will not suffice,’ he said yesterday.
Friends of the Earth director Oisín Coghlan said: ‘There is still a narrow path to avoid complete catastrophe, but we are not on it and the window of opportunity to get onto it is closing fast.’
‘Narrow path to avoid catastrophe’