The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations scraps its gloomiest forecast: 4 to 6 degrees of global warming by 2100. The doomsday scenarios and ominous media reports about the future of the climate prove too bleak.
Extreme global warming is not expected to progress that quickly, and the gloomy forecasts of sea levels being more than a meter higher by 2100 are also too pessimistic.
That does not mean that nothing is wrong, or that the damage is minor, emphasizes emissions researcher Detlef van Vuuren, author of the new IPCC scenarios.
‘Impossible to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius’
In the gloomiest new scenario, Earth’s temperature rises to around 3.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, well above the 2 degrees Celsius considered ‘safe’.
“And if we do too little about greenhouse gas emissions, we will inevitably end up with higher values anyway. It just happens later,” explains van Vuuren. The climate expert points out that it is no longer possible to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, as intended.
Catastrophic scenario
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather (Berkeley Earth) also points out in the journal Nature that “as long as emissions remain above zero, the Earth will continue to warm. And the rate of warming that is now less realistic for 2100 remains plausible for 2150 and beyond.”
The old catastrophic scenario, drawn up fifteen years ago, assumed a world that would barely become sustainable, but would instead start burning coal at an ever-increasing rate. There would also be little innovation, and the world population would grow more than it does.
‘Only’ 2.5 degrees’
A doomsday scenario, in other words, “if we did not act”. But fortunately, the world has evolved. Renewable energy has quickly become cheaper. And, although still insufficient, there is indeed a climate policy.
In the old disaster scenario, the temperature in 2100 would range between 3.3 and 5.7 degrees. However, according to the UN Environment Program (UNEP), under current policies, the world is heading for ‘only’ 2.6 degrees.
