This is a good summary of the main points of the IPCC report released yesterday. Read the full report here.
Expect more catastrophes
The new analysis, a synthesis of six previous reports by the United Nations’ climate group, presents a mixed picture of the world’s fight against climate change. Here are three takeaways:
1) The world is on track to surpass a significant level of warming. The world is likely to hit what scientists consider relatively safe levels of warming — 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — by the early 2030s, the report warned. Countries could still take steps to prevent that, by slashing greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and no longer adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the 2050s. But the required measures are so extreme that they seem increasingly unlikely, many experts say.
2) On the current track, brace for more disasters. Continued warming will mean more catastrophic flooding, deadly heat waves, crop-destroying droughts and other extreme weather. Some of those effects are already visible. Last year, record-breaking heat waves hit much of the world, including the U.S. and Europe, and floods submerged a third of Pakistan.
3) The world has made some real progress. In the past, climate reports warned that warming could surpass four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Today, the Earth is on a trajectory of around two to three degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), thanks to the uptake of cleaner energy and to projections that coal use will decline. That difference of a few degrees can, like a fever, prevent more catastrophic events. And as my colleague Somini Sengupta noted, pivoting away from fossil fuels is the fastest way to stop global warming.