UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5C degrees

On April 4, 2022, the IPPC AR6 WGIII Report was released to the public. In this article, I will try to summarize what was presented. This is complicated by the sensational nature of the analysis presented about the rate of change in global temperature. The analysis conclusion was interpreted by the UN Secretary-General as a dramatic proclamation of the dire need for corrective action.

As you would expect, there was a PR blitz associated with that event. In this article, we report on the major part of the PR blitz. In subsequent articles, we will be examining the main arguments presented by Working Group III.

Working Groups

For those who are not familiar with how the IPCC works, it is generally organized into three Working Groups. WGI focuses on the Scientific Basis for Global Warming and has been in existence the longest. WGII focuses on Economic Impacts and is relatively new. Their report seven years ago to me was very disappointing but there is a learning curve with everything. WGIII focuses on what to do about Global Warming and tends to be the most politically oriented.

Most people are not able to digest the work of WGI although I think it is excellent. But I have a science background so I can understand it. I also have an economics background. For this reason, the WGII effort last time around was very disappointing to me. But in a way, it is more challenging than the scientific basis since the impacts of Global Warming vary from location to location. Our ability to sort this out is not as great as our ability to understand how greenhouse gases result in Warming. Working Group III also has a difficult job because, when it comes to dealing with Global Warming, the saying that you can not please everyone is an understatement.

In this article, I am simply trying to report what the UN IPCC released on April 4, 2022. As an aside, I prefer the term Global Warming simply because as a scientist/engineer, I work by considering cause and effect. It is the Warming that impacts the Climate although there are feedback loops. The causes of Warming are easier to understand than the impacts of Warming on Climate.

We will be providing additional articles on this topic to examine the problem and proposed solutions.

Heart of the Matter

The graphic below is at the heart of the matter but I will wait for a future article to explain it as it is both important and complicated. The current goal is to prevent Warming to reach the level of 1.5C (that is Celsius, not Fahrenheit) from levels prior to the Industrial Revolution and that is what the IPCC says will not happen if we do not take drastic action but which is possible. So that is the focus of the Working Group III Report.

Recently the UN IPCC released the final draft (subject to exiting) of the Working Group III Report. It came with a warning. Here is the Secretary-General of the U.N. delivering the warning.

They did not fully explain the reason for the warning but it is very related to the below press release and the Headlines from the Summary of the Report for Policymakers. There is a lot of redundancy between the two documents but I am presenting them for purposes of completeness. These are images of the press release (to preserve the format) so the links are not live. To get to the live links simply click here. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/resources/press/press-release/

Now we will look at the Headlines from the Summary Report for Policy Makers some of which are (not surprisingly) very similar to the points in the Press Release. There is no Section A below. That usually is information on organization of the rest of the document. To view the live version of the Headlines, simply click here. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/resources/spm-headline-statements/