Carbon dioxide levels 50% higher than pre-industrial era
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With the climate crisis getting worse, the world might face a tragedy despite the world's success in containing carbon emissions.
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Carbon Dioxide levels increase becoming 50% higher than in the pre-industrial era
Carbon Dioxide levels increase to become 50% higher than in the pre-industrial era. This, according to US government data, pushed the planet, and will continue to do so in coming years into conditions that have not existed for millions of years.
Based on the data collected by scientists, the world may still delve into radical climate tragedies despite all efforts to curb carbon emissions. That is, in the best-case scenario, if governments manage to contain carbon emissions, the world will still be at risk of a roll-balling climate crisis.
Today, the world is far away from the best-case scenario since global governments continue to fail at decreasing planet-heating levels.
“It’s depressing that we’ve lacked the collective willpower to slow the relentless rise in CO2,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Hawaii. “Fossil-fuel use may no longer be accelerating, but we are still racing at top speed towards a global catastrophe.”
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the Earth’s CO2 levels were about 280ppm for almost 6,000 years. This provided a stable foundation for the advance of human civilization. Ever since then, people have released about 1.5tn tons of CO2. That would be enough to raise the temperatures of the world for years to come, potentially even hundreds of thousands of years to come.
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“Carbon dioxide is at levels our species has never experienced before,” said Pieter Tans, senior scientist at Noaa’s global monitoring laboratory. “We have known about this for half a century, and have failed to do anything meaningful about it. What’s it going to take for us to wake up?”
This limit, which was agreed to by the world’s governments in the 2015 Paris climate pact, is now increasingly likely to be breached in the coming decades. A new research paper has found that the lingering effect of past emissions means there is a 42% chance the 1.5C limit will be passed even if emissions are halted immediately.
According to scientists, global emissions must be cut in half this decade and completely eliminated by 2050 if the world is to prevent catastrophic climate change. The latest analysis, which looked at the long-term impact of CO2, methane, nitrogen oxide, and aerosols like sulfur or soot, concluded that if emissions cutbacks are delayed until 2029, there is a two-thirds risk of temporarily exceeding 1.5C.
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“Our study found that in all cases, we are committed by past emissions to reaching peak temperatures about five to 10 years before we experience them,” said Kyle Armour, a climate scientist at the University of Washington and a report co-author.
“What will be more difficult is dealing with a three-degree world. Already this year we’ve seen horrific impacts, like the heatwave in India and Pakistan, and floods in the same region. This is just the beginning” said Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics.
