Global Warming – the Evidence
LINKS
GHG record atmospheric content 2019 World Meteorological Organisation
Key findings of the Special Report by the IPCC: Based on the available scientific, technical and socio-economic literature relevant to global warming of 1.5°C, and for the comparison between global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions data (USEPA): Data explanations / charts.
Decade review of climate breakdown (Verge)
Tipping points. The Guardian: Changes in overlapping ecosystems and weather systems are likely to create exponential rates of breakdown.
Anthropocene Age: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Explanation of the Anthropocene Age in the context of geological history. Instrumental temperature records exist from 1850, but data from ice core samples indicate that today’s temperatures were last seen at least 100,000 years ago. Furthermore, the level of carbon dioxide is the highest it has been for several million years, when the sea level was 15-20 metres higher.
Guardian article about climate emergency in geological context
Welcome to the Anthropocene: Educational web portal. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and others. Includes short videos
BACKGROUND
The last 10,000 years or so the world has been in a happy equilibrium of temperature and climatic conditions just right for humans and the plethora of other forms of life that we live with.
But the planet has warmed by about 1° since the industrial revolution began to accelerate in mid-eighteenth century. Most of the increase was in the last 50 years. Evidence of this began to appear from the mid-1960s.
1965 Report of the U.S. Environmental Pollution Panel, U.S. President’s Science Advisory Committee: A far sighted document put together by many of America’s top scientists for President Lyndon Johnson, who welcomed it. The report describes the planet’s interdependent ecologies and natural resources, with comprehensive explanations of the inevitable consequences of mass human pollution; then provides recommendations for a comprehensive strategic approach to ensure sustainable societal levels of industry and civilisation over the decades to come. Alas this brilliant national distillation of thinking and planning was undermined first by the powerful industry lobby groups and then lost to oblivion in the tsunami of hyper-capitalism.
Petroleum Institute early warning report: A comprehensive report commissioned by the USPI from Stanford Research Institute in 1968 was quietly shelved. Guardian article.
By the 1980s scientific data collection indicated that accumulating CO2 was warming the atmosphere and international discussions began to suggest that cooperation and changes in technology were necessary to halt the warming process. The massive vested interests that control economies, politics, commerce and production have ever since sought to trivialise the issues, deny the science and mock the bearers of unwelcome information. This has meant that all international efforts to contain the planetary emergency have been unsuccessful. Agreements among nations to reduce emissions have been either sidelined until another day, or avoided by loopholes that ride roughshod over the intentions of the agreements.
In 1992 the United Nations facilitated a convention amongst nations (the Conference of Parties, or CoP) that agreed to reduce emissions to a level that will keep global warming to 1.5° in the scientific knowledge that climatic temperatures in excess of 2° will cause catastrophic effects to the planet. Guardian backgrounder
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988. It’s special report provided an international benchmark based on the available scientific, technical and socio-economic literature relevant to global warming of 1.5°C, and for the comparison between global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Since the publication of this report, ongoing data indicates that energy corporations and associated industries have continued to expand production, exploration and use of fossil fuels, while distracting public attention with PR campaigning about plans to research and develop renewable energy based on alternative non-CO2 emitting technology. There is little evidence that this is anything more than greenwashing.
The 1997 CoP meeting was held in Kyoto, during which the “Kyoto Protocol“, the first document with legally binding obligations for limits and reductions, was adopted by the ratified countries. The period of applicability was set in two steps for the years 2008 to 2012 and 2013 to 2020.
In order to be able to maintain the international climate protection process after 2020, a new climate agreement was required. This was adopted in 2015 at the COP in Paris as the “Paris Agreement”, which, for the first time, included a specific target for limiting global warming to well below 2°C above the pre-industrial levels of 1750. The ratified countries set their own reduction targets, whereby a review and strengthening of the climate protection efforts was to take place every 5 years. In October 2016, the required number of at least 55 ratified countries, which are responsible for at least 55 % of the global greenhouse gas emissions, was reached, which meant the agreement could enter into force. However implementation of the agreement depends on the political will of nations. There are no penalties for failure to reach targets.
Nor is much serious intent evident amongst governments to lead the way for private investors by divestment of shares in fossil energy companies, e.g. public pension funds.
The latest round of meetings at CoP25 in Madrid has again failed to make any headway on actual implementation of emission reduction measures. The meeting foundered on the issue of the Carbon Trade system, the system that enables wealthy countries to pay a charge for their ongoing pollution to countries that are not yet developed enough to make enough emissions, i.e. focussed on money and profit from the environmental degradation of the world. Global CO2 emissions are tracking for about 4° increase by 2050.
The public is being deluded by a narrative that a gradual transition to renewable energies and new technologies is possible over several decades without systemic disruption. That might have been true in about 1990 but it is too late now.
XR Whangarei