Analysis yesterday showed that global temperature rises would be limited to 1.9C if pledges were made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations climate summit.
It is the first sign that the nations of the world could reach a pact at the Paris climate conference in 2015 to keep global warming below 2C.
A big breakthrough came when India, the world’s third biggest emitter, promised to reach ‘net zero’ by 2070, although it is asking for financial aid for developing countries from richer nations to be doubled to £730billion.
The University of Melbourne’s analysis showed that temperatures would rise by 1.9C if all the promises were fulfilled.
Yesterday’s analysis revealed that pledges to reduce greenhouse gases made at the United Nations climate summit, Glasgow, would keep global temperatures rising to 1.9C.
It stated that the chances of success were now greater than 50%. Ed Miliband, Labour’s business spokesperson, warned that while progress is welcome, we must be cautious about declaring success based on vague and often vacuous net-zero targets three decades from now.
“For example, Australia has an 2050 net zero target, but its 2030 plans align with four degrees of global warming.”
It is unlikely that the UN goal of keeping temperature rises to 1.5C, which is more ambitious, will be met.
Malte Meinshausen (associate professor in climate science at Melbourne) said that the key to the report’s success was India’s and China’s reductions in their emission targets for 2030. He also praised India’s commitment of net zero by 2070.
Based on pledges made, the chance of keeping global warming under 2c is now greater than 50%.
The UN summit’s ambitious goal of keeping temperatures at 1.5c, with the slogan “Keep 1.5c Alive”, is unlikely to be met without major reductions in carbon emission.
Global emissions must be reduced by 45 percent by 2030 in order to stay within the 1.5c limit.
A big breakthrough came when India , the world’s third biggest emitter, promised to reach ‘net zero’ by 2070, although it is asking for financial aid for developing countries from richer nations to be doubled to £730billion
Professor Meinshausen stated that the goal of limiting heating to 1.5C was still a distant challenge. There is a 90per cent chance it will fail based upon existing commitments.
Researchers from Stanford, East Anglia, and Exeter in the US also found that global carbon pollution will rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels. This is according to scientists, who warned this as Cop26 climate talks go on.
Due to widespread Covid-19 lockdowns, carbon emissions from fossil fuels dropped 5.4% in 2020 from a record-breaking high in the previous year.
However, they are expected again to rise by 4.9percent to 36.4 million tonnes this year, or approximately 0.8 per cent less than 2019 levels, the annual Global Carbon Budget analysis shows.
The figures show that, at current levels of emission, the world only has 11 years before it exhausts the entire “budget” for carbon human can put into the atmosphere while still staying within the 1.5C limit.
These figures show that the world needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 1.4 billion tonnes annually, as opposed to the 1.9-billion-tonne drop in pollution due to the pandemic.