World feels the heat of climate change
'Not good news'
At COP25, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid last month, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas described two reports by his organization as "not good news".
"Global warming continues," he said, adding that average global temperatures had risen by about 1.1 C since the preindustrial era and in the oceans by 0.5 C.
"We have started seeing hunger increase once again after a period of decline. Now, we have more than 800 million people suffering from a lack of food."
Records have been broken worldwide concerning emissions of the three main greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide; methane; and nitrous oxide. Carbon dioxide is regarded as the most significant challenge.
Taalas, who comes from Finland and started his second four-year term as head of the WMO on Wednesday, said: "We are heading toward a temperature increase of 3 to 5 degrees C by the end of the century. If we use all fossil fuel resources, we will move toward 8 C."
Some 85 percent of the world's energy still comes from fossil fuels and only 15 percent from renewable energy.
The United Nations Environmental Programme's 2019 Emissions Gap Report issued in late November also painted a bleak picture. It said the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change "will slip out of reach" unless the world begins to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The goals of the agreement, set in 2015, are limiting global warming to "well below 2 C above preindustrial levels" and pursuing efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5 C.
Global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by about 11 percent since the first UNEP emissions gap report in 2010. Growing global emissions mean that more and faster cuts will be needed to meet the Paris agreement goals. To achieve the 1.5 C target, nations must increase their commitments fivefold starting this year, according to the UNEP report.
Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, described a doomsday-type scenario in which temperatures will rise by 5 C if the world continues to release greenhouse gases and takes no action.
He said at COP25 that in the depths of the Ice Age, when sheets of ice kilometers thick covered large parts of the Earth's surface, where large cities and long coastlines are located today, the planet was only about 5 C colder than it is now.
No one knows what will happen if temperatures rise by another 5 C, he said, comparing the lack of action to "looking at an existential risk to humankind and deciding to take a gamble ... That's madness, and we can't let that happen."
In a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October 2018, the world's leading climate scientists warned that there are only 12 years left for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5 C. Even half a degree beyond that will significantly increase the risk of droughts, floods, heat waves and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
COP25, which was extended for two days, was widely viewed as a failure. Nearly 200 nations attending did not agree on setting higher targets and working to settle the details of two outstanding rules of the Paris agreement: Article 6 on the international carbon market and Article 8 on the loss and damage that underdeveloped nations have endured due to the climate crisis and how they will be compensated.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed disappointment. "The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis," he said.
The official withdrawal of the US, the world's largest historical carbon emitter, from the Paris agreement in November has dealt a heavy blow to the global momentum on fighting climate change. This is despite the fact that many US states, cities and businesses have said they will keep their promise to cut carbon emissions.
