2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week. 

Editor's Pick

There’s a huge gap between the Paris climate change goals and reality

Current pledges are about a third of what’s needed.

Coal-fired power plant in Wyoming 

Coal-fired power plant in Wyoming 

n 2015 in Paris, the countries of the world agreed to hold the rise in global average temperatures to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

How’s that going?

The unavoidably grim answer: not well, and not just because President Donald Trump has promised to pull the United States out of the accord.

Every year, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) releases an “Emissions Gap” report, on the remaining disparity between the world’s stated ambitions on climate and the actions it is currently taking. The 2017 edition of the report is out a week before the next round of international climate talks in Bonn, Germany. And it reports that the gap remains ... substantial.

Researchers calculate that for a reasonable chance of hitting our goal, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 and the gap must be closed by 2030 — in other words, if we are not on the right trajectory by 2030, all hope of 1.5 degrees is lost and 2 degrees is almost certainly out of reach as well.

Let’s run through a few of the top-line conclusions of the report, which was assembled by an international team of scientists based on the most recent published science. 

There’s a huge gap between the Paris climate change goals and reality by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Oct 31, 2017


Links posted on Facebook

Sun Oct 29, 2017

Mon Oct 30, 2017

Tue Oct 31, 2017

Wed Nov 1, 2017

Thu Nov 2, 2017

Fri Nov 3, 2017

Sat Nov 4, 2017

Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 4 November, 2017


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