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https://www.sciencealert.com/the-next-six-years-will-make-or-break-our-climate-goal-of-1-5c-warming>
"If humanity wants to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C,
we can only emit another 250 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) of CO₂.
This effectively gives the world just six years to get to net zero, according
to calculations in our new paper published in
Nature Climate Change.
The global level of emissions is presently 40 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year. And,
as this figure was calculated from the start of 2023, the time limit may be
actually closer to five years.
Our estimate is consistent with an assessment published by 50 leading climate
scientists in June and updates with new climate data many of the key figures
reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August
2021.
How much CO₂ can still be emitted while remaining under a certain level of
warming is referred to as the "carbon budget". The carbon budget concept works
because the increase in Earth's global mean surface temperature has increased
in a linear fashion with the total amount of CO₂ people have emitted since the
industrial revolution.
The other side of this equation is that, roughly speaking, warming stops when
CO₂ emissions stop: in other words, at net zero CO₂. This explains why net zero
is such an important concept and why so many countries, cities, and companies
have adopted net zero targets.
We revised the remaining carbon budget down from the 500 gigatonnes reported by
the the IPCC from the start of 2020.
Some of this revision is merely timing: three years and 120 gigatonnes of CO₂
emissions later, the world is closer to the 1.5°C threshold. Improvements we
made to the method for calculating budget adjustments shrank the remaining
budget further."
Via Rixty Dixet, who wrote "The clock is ticking."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
