Excessive optimism by the IPCC

The IPCC has been praised for the stark realism of its recent Synthesis Report[1]. And it’s true that the tone is bleaker and the language more forceful than in previous reports.

But overall I believe it’s far too optimistic. I don’t doubt the science. We do need “deep global GHG emissions reductions this decade” (paras A.4.3 and B.5.1) in order to have even a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C.

It’s the recommendations! They would be right for a world in which world leaders were good people. People who followed the evidence to find then implement solutions to the climate crisis.

That’s not the world we live in.

The climate emergency is a global crisis, well beyond the control of any one state. The IPCC rightly describes international cooperation as a “critical enabler” (para C.7.6, also para C.1). But you might as well ask Boris Johnson to unite with the EU or Vladimir Putin to respect human rights.

Over and over again progress at the UNFCCC COPs has been blocked by leaders who care more for short-term national advantage and the profits of oil companies than long-term global survival. In the UK, USA, Russia, China, Hungary, Italy, India – it would be tedious to go on – the last decade has the rise of nationalists who barely even claim to respect international law and democratic values. The willingness of countries to collaborate on anything except trade is markedly lower than it was when the UNFCCC process started.

And let’s look at money. We need, the IPCC says, “improved access to finance for low-emissions infrastructure and technologies, especially in developing countries (C.2.5)”.

In the real world the major nations have so far failed consistently to provide climate finance at the long-promised $100B per year. And they have yet to agree numbers or a mechanism to pay for the loss and damage they have caused.

There is just no chance that they will suddenly see the error of their ways and do what’s necessary.

So I just ask this. Shouldn’t the IPCC  be writing for the world we actually live in?

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[1] IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report (2023)

Halfway to catastrophe!

Two weeks ago New Scientist reported the results of a kind of mini systematic review of global temperatures since 1850. In it Michael Le Page argues that the best baseline period - to give the temperature before global warming started - is 1850 to 1899. For convenience some temperature series use 1880-1899 as their baseline but this is misleading because temperatures in the 1880s were depressed by the eruption of Krakatoa.

When the five available temperature series are adjusted to use 1850-1899 as baseline it's clear that four of the five will show more than one degree of warming before the Paris IPCC conference this Autumn.

That's halfway to the the two degree level generally thought to imply a strong probability of catastrophic climate change.

Le Page continues with the prediction that unless we take "drastic action" the Earth will reach that two degree point by around 2050.

Adaptation: Science, pessimism and planning

I went to a Castle Debate on climate change yesterday morning. It wasn't - fortunately - a debate but a briefing. It was realistic, and therefore depressing.

The consensus, based on the latest IPCC report and work by PWC, was that though it's still POSSIBLE to keep the temperature rise below two degrees it's likely to be four degrees. That's not really 'four degrees'. We're on track for four degrees by 2100 with substantial increases thereafter. And, given the uncertainties, a likelihood of four degrees means means the possibility of five, maybe more, even by 2100.

The first speaker, Dr Celine Herweijer of PWC, presented these facts and the IPCC view on impacts - falling food production, dying coral reefs, loss of summer sea ice from the Arctic. In fact the usual stuff. She also drew attention to the UK's vulnerabilities - we import 40% of our food and our 350 largest public companies own overseas assets worth £10T (that's £10,000,000,000,000) many of which are vulnerable to climate change. The most vulnerable sectors include energy, mining, utilities and manufacturing.

Next up was Anthony Hobley of Carbon Tracker. Hobley acknowledged the science and mentioned that whole civilisations can fail. It's happened repeatedly in the past though never globally. Of course, ours is the first global civilisation so that qualification is not entirely encouraging. These failures often followed environmental changes and the ruling elites failed to respond because their wealth shielded them from the impacts of those changes until it was too late to act. Hobley did not make the obvious connections but I will:

• Climate change has increased in parallel with increasing inequality.
• The super-rich are increasingly powerful and increasingly isolated from the problems that beset the rest of us.
• London's economy is increasingly dependent on the richest 1%.
• Some of them use their wealth to stop governments addressing the problems.
• Therefore, a sharp reduction in economic inequality is an essential step in addressing climate change.

But back to the meeting! Hobley tried hard to be encouraging about the prospects for the 2015 UN Climate Change conference in Paris which he clearly regarded as our last hope. However he struggled to be optimistic and implied that the most plausible success scenario was a global crash programme that he called the Lastminute scenario. This is similar to my Emergency Braking scenario.

The final speaker was Lord Krebs of Wytham. As Chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the  Committee on Climate Change he was very well qualified to explain his committee's thinking and recommendations. In short, last year's National Adaptation Programme was based on climate projections made in 2012. These projections included rising temperatures and sea levels, drier summers, wetter winters and more extreme weather events. Specifically they expect 1 in 100 year events to occur every ten years.

So a science-based plan?

Actually no. In answer to a question from me Krebs explained that the projections were based on two degrees of warming "because that is the government's target". He accepted that this approach is inadequate and would need to be revised (though I didn't get much sense of urgency from his remarks).

I will go further. The current National Adaptation Programme is essentially dishonest because it implies that it is appropriate to the actual threats. Only a programme based on the most likely projection - four degrees by 2100 - can be honest. And, given the uncertainties, an honest programme must at least consider the possibility that things will be worse.