Cassandra returns

For the last 4 years I've been heavily involved with developing the Green Party's policy on the Climate Emergency. I will have more to say about that in the future but this blog is my personal views. So here's the first.

1.5 is not alive. It's dead. Even the most optimistic IPCC '1.5 compliant' scenarios go above 1.5 within 50 years though get below it by 2100 - by assuming lots of negative emissions. And those scenarios are purely theoretical. They don't even get lip service from the big emitters.

The probable result of every nation meeting its NDC commitments would be much worse, more like 3 degrees than 1.5. And how likely is it that every nation will meet its NDC commitments ? 

Very unlikely. Emissions  have risen almost every year for half a century. They are not reducing and there is little sense in forecasting peak emissions until we see some, even very slight, reductions. To put it another way, the UNFCCC process, the COPs, has failed.

So are we on track for 3 degrees? 

I don't think so. it's likely that we will exceed 2 degrees this century and that this will create massive positive feedback effects, such as the release of vast amounts of methane from under the arctic tundra. The results of that will be an increase of more, perhaps much more, than 3 degrees. 

This isn't quite inevitable. There are still ways back. But they get harder, technically and politically, with each passing month.