Planet Could Bust 1.5 ° C Barrier Soon. Don’t Read Too Much into It
May 12, 2022
Don’t read too much into the headline.
One year cracking the 1.5°C barrier does not mean the global average has moved up to that level. We can expect a certain amount of up and down as always.
Don’t worry, we’re still in deep trouble – as always, let’s not make it worse than it is.
Since signing the Paris climate agreement in 2015, nations around the world have focused on one climate goal: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels this century. But as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to increase, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization shows global temperatures could temporarily hit that threshold within the next five years.
The WMO stated Monday there is a 50 percent chance that the annual global temperature will hit this mark by 2026. The probability is only increasing with time. In 2015, the chance of temporarily observing 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming was zero, underscoring the rapid pace of human-caused climate change.
“A single year of exceedance above 1.5°C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” Leon Hermanson, a researcher at Britain’s Met Office who led the report, said in a news release.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
May 12, 2022 at 9:54 am
Beats me how we can avoid shooting past 1.5°C within a few years. Like a thermometer thrown into an oven, we will watch as the mercury accelerates.
I live near huge lignite mines in sunny & windy Germany. Today, 86% of the electricity produced by RWE is coal power (with 6% gas power). Solar and wind make up just 14% of the mix. Weaning ourselves off Putin’s oil, coal and gas means the focus is now on keeping burning lignite.
We are fucked. Drought is now hitting Europe, with brutal heat torching Portugal, Spain and now France.
May 12, 2022 at 11:03 am
Sorry, but I have trouble thinking of Germany as sunny, unless you’re comparing it to…Scotland?
May 14, 2022 at 11:38 pm
He left out the ‘sarc’ symbol. Germany going for 100% WWS is like Libya going for 100% hydro.
May 20, 2022 at 6:34 am
Ya see, Libya doesn’t need hydro because it has complementary solar and wind galore, some good potential hydro storage sites, wires, and batteries get cheaper all the time.
Libya’s proximity to the Tropic of Cancer provides the solar radiation equivalent of over 4,000 barrels of oil a day—6x Libya’s oil production.
Nearby Morocco’s grid is 35% RE—14% solar with some of the biggest combined PV/CSP sites in the world, and… 20% hydro. They’re building more quickly, though like almost every country, not quickly enough.
Germany continues to show how a major industrial country can move toward 100% safe clean cheap reliable renewable energy technically. Not nearly fast enough due to the same kind of disinformation, denial & delay industry and psychopathic state and national leaders the US and almost all the MENA countries suffer from. But Germany’s democracy is much healthier and may still overcome them.
Germany has the 3rd worst potential in the world for solar and wind power compared to energy demand. But the country could still provide twice the energy it uses just with S&W, just with today’s technology. Which is improving all the time.
The world as a whole, btw, could provide 100 times what it uses just from today’s wind and solar tech. About 40 countries could provide at least 1000 times more than they use, and about 40 more could generate at least 100 times their needs. Since we also have hydro, tidal, bio-energy, and other energies, and geothermal alone could provide more than the world needs, and the combination of hydro, pumped hydro, and lithium and other batteries could provide all the storage needed it’s proved yet again that renewable energy can provide all the energy the world needs.
The study also shows that RE requires minimal land—even getting everything from solar, only Japan would need more than 5% of its land, and the country could easily get all it needs from wind (largely offshore) and geothermal.
Many countries have high numbers because they use so little energy. Even if they all increased their use by 100 times, every one of them could still generate all they need just from W&S. This is all undeniable. The ARF trolls will be denying it any minute now.
‘The Sky’s The Limit’ Report
ARF = anti-renewable fanatics
May 12, 2022 at 12:22 pm
“Planet Could Bust 1.5 ° C Barrier Soon. Don’t Read Too Much into It”
Sure, we could pass 1.5 in a few years, then get back to 1.3 for a few more years or so, but are we seriously supposed to expect that 1.5 isn’t a done deal?
It’s like Mauna Loa readings. It fluctuates, but it only goes up in the long run.
Only large reductions in actual carbon emissions has an effect – and we aren’t close to it as yet. Avoiding looking at the elephant doesn’t mean the elephant isn’t there.
Revealed: the ‘carbon bombs’ set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas
“The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m a day for the rest of the decade exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned if global heating is to be limited to well under 2C.”
May 12, 2022 at 2:23 pm
ClimateAdam compares climate change to a car that can only accelerate. So, the car reaches 70 mph and ‘don’t read too much into it’? As always, its the trendline, not the absolute value, that is alarming. ClimateAdam says arguing about the cost of climate action is like arguing about the cost of putting brakes in that car, which I find to be a real useful metaphor. Of course brakes are expensive, but who would drive around in a car that can only accelerate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUMeWPNSd6s