At the landmark Paris climate agreement, nearly every country in the world pledged to a goal to limit warming to well below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, and work toward a more ambitious goal to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). The hope is that such a limit will help Earth avoid […]

At the landmark Paris climate agreement, nearly every country in the world pledged to a goal to limit warming to well below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, and work toward a more ambitious goal to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). The hope is that such a limit will help Earth avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

However, a recent review suggests that even the more ambitious ceiling of 1.5°C may be too warm for the planet’s polar ice sheets and trigger massive sea level rise.

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  • kbal@fedia.io
    2·
    27 days ago

    The point of the 1.5° goal was to give policy makers an idea of how much time they’d have to get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a pace that would be acceptable to politicians and economists. According to the plans they came up with back in 2015 we’ll need world emissions to start going down by 2020, so there’s not much time left.