‘A deeply troubling discovery’: Earth may have already passed the crucial 1.5°C warming limit
The ConversationFeb 07
The Facts
For the first time ever, global average temperatures rose over 1.5 C (2.7 F) through a 12-month period between February 2023 and January 2024, the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported on Thursday.
In 2015, the world's nations vowed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrialization levels — which is seen as key to avoiding climate change's worst effects. Thursday's report, however, doesn't mean the Paris Agreement has been breached, as the UN deal refers to long-term temperatures.
The Spin
Narrative A
To say that humanity has a tough task at hand would be an understatement as far as climate change is concerned. And if the reports of the 1.5 C threshold being crossed across 12 months is anything to go by, we may even have missed the chance to prevent global warming. This latest data must renew efforts to halve global emissions by 2030.
Narrative B
Since the Paris Agreement of 2015 set up the 1.5 C benchmark, the world has obsessed over this figure. Activists, business entities, and governments have all aligned themselves with this consensus goal. But it doesn't represent a scientific threshold or an ecological tipping point for the planet, as is feared. It's more of a moral threshold just to get the world to act.
Nerd narrative
There's a 50% chance that global carbon dioxide emissions will peak by 2034, according to the Metaculus forecasting community.