The media are not particularly good at reporting things already in the public domain. Their readerships have themselves largely to blame. How avidly do we read reports of refugees in rubber boats drowning in the Mediterranean? Do we listen to news of climate change to the end, or do we switch to another channel. No wonder the latest IPCC report got hardly a mention. It seems climate change is no longer newsworthy.
Hot News Hidden on Page 24 of Latest IPCC Report
The latest IPCC report was published earlier this month with very little fanfare. Most of it is little more than a litany of the scary things happening when global warming exceeds pre-industrial levels by 2º C. But there was a nugget of a more immediate threat way down on Page 24.
The ambitions stated by worldwide governments in the Paris Accord of 2015, are no longer enough to limit global warming to 1.5º C. Humanity will soon have hard evidence of what it has done, and that moment is imminent. This is because the Earth is currently warming at 0.2º C per decade on the back of past and current emissions. Simple math tells us the 1.5º C Day could be as early as 2040.
Everything Gets Worse as 2º C Approaches.
We could slow things down considerably if we turned off all CO2 emissions but that is not going to happen. Therefore 1.5º C Day is fast approaching with the unstoppable force of a tsunami. Consider these facts:
Night-time low temperatures during heatwaves will be 4.5º C hotter @ 1.5º C warming, but 6º C hotter @ 2º C warming. Coral reef loss of another 70 to 90% @ 1.5º C becomes almost total loss @ 2º C of warming. The latest IPCC report says losses of insect, plant and vertebrate habitats will double between 1.5º C and 2º C.
And yet we still have people saying they don’t believe that climate change is permanent. How long will it take to re-freeze the poles, and put back the coral? Just asking how that would be done.
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Preview Image: Bleached Coral on Great Barrier Reef (2016)
