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The fifth IPCC report should have silenced climate change sceptics.
If you give the doubters an inch, they will take a mile. And so, once again, climate sceptics have had a field day after the release of the United Nations’ (UN) fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month merely because it
acknowledged that the rate of global warming was somewhat slower than what was predicted in its last report in 2007. That was enough to make the climate change deniers rubbish the entire science of climate change, seeing it as a conspiracy against the industrialised world, which is being held principally responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGS) through the profligate burning of fossil fuels. The fifth IPCC report, in fact, leaves little room for doubt that the world is heading towards a climate disaster. It might take 30 years or longer, but if the current rate of fossil fuel burning and emission of GHGS does not decrease drastically, the inevitability of global temperatures exceeding the two degrees celsius limit stares us in the face.
The latest IPCC report’s conclusion that the rate of warming has been slower than predicted previously is partly due to the fact that the absorption capacity of the oceans is still being studied. It is estimated that around one-third of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are absorbed by the oceans. Yet, a slower rate of warming does not mean there is a reversal. On the contrary, the new report is even more certain that the world is heading towards a climate catastrophe by stating that it is 95% certain that human activity is responsible for global warming. This conclusion has been reached after an exhaustive survey of studies on the science of climate change, assembled by 209 lead authors and 50 editors from 39 countries in a report exceeding 2,000 pages.
The novel aspect of the latest report is the concept of a “carbon budget” for the world. The IPCC holds that if the earth’s temperature is not to exceed two degrees celsius above the present temperature, the total amount of GHGs in the atmosphere should not exceed 800-880 gigatonnes. In other words, if the emission of CO2 and other GHGS is not curbed adequately to prevent such an accumulation, the earth will become two degrees warmer. The consequences of a warmer earth are already being felt in the changing pattern of precipitation, with dry areas getting less rain and wet areas getting more, an increase in cyclonic storms, the melting of ice caps and glaciers and a rise in sea levels. The real worry is the fact that the earth already has 530 gigatonnes of accumulated GHGS. In other words, more than half the carbon budget has already been exhausted. So business as usual will not work; there has to be a drastic reduction in the quantity of emissions if we are to have even a sliver of hope that the earth will not surpass that figure of two degrees celsius warmer.
Climate change has been debated over several decades now since the first IPCC report in 1988. Yet, even as the science of predicting global warming and its outcomes gets more refined and accurate with each successive report, so does the obduracy of those responsible for the current crisis. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon aptly stated, when releasing the report, “The heat is on. We must act.” Yet the action, particularly by the older industrialised nations, has been slow, grudging and as is evident from the latest data, largely ineffective.
Every successive global negotiation to determine what actions nations need to address climate change illustrates how most nations continue to hope that by some miraculous intervention, the inevitability of climate change will be postponed without demanding any drastic change in lifestyle. If some nations have accepted the need for change, they are few and do not really count in the
hierarchy of GHG-emitting nations. So the grim warnings contained in the IPCC report appear to be a premonition of darker days ahead.
The science of global warming will always remain one of forecasting based on existing data and available methodologies. It can never be 100% certain. But the evidence that climate change has set in, and already affected the poorest and most vulnerable countries, is mounting. Unfortunately, facts alone do not push nations into acting in the interest of the greater good. Thus, even though the fifth IPCC report is a stronger affirmation of these realities, unfortunately the other reality of global politics, where older industrialised economies will not acknowledge their responsibility for the crisis, continues to prevail and override scientific proof.
