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Climate report: Scale of changes ‘unprecedented’ - but not too late to slow warming

A UN report on climate change has found “deep reductions” in emissions are crucial to limit global warming.

THE CONCENTRATION OF carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was higher in 2019 than any other time in at least two million years, according to a landmark climate report.

Three months ahead of COP26, where world leaders will meet in Glasgow to negotiate climate commitments, a United Nations panel has released a significant report on the current state of the climate.

Authored by climate scientists from around the world, it is the sixth assessment report on the physical science of climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report emphasises that the scale of recent changes to the climate system are “unprecedented” over hundreds and thousands of years and that human influence is the primary driver of global warming.

In 2019, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than at any other time in at least two million years and concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide at their highest for in at least the past 800,000 years.

Now, “deep reductions” in carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are crucial to prevent the planet from warming by more than 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius.

With a reduction in emissions, it would take at least twenty to thirty years to stablise global temperatures, but benefits for air quality would come more quickly, the report said.

Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC working group behind the report, said that it is a “reality check”.

“We now have a much clearer picture of the past, present and future climate, which is essential for understanding where we are headed, what can be done, and how we can prepare,” Masson-Delmotte said.

What’s happening with climate change?

  • The concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere was higher in 2019 than at any other time in two million years
  • Global surface temperatures have increased faster since 1970 than during any other 50-year period in the last two thousand years
  • The annual average Arctic sea ice area was at its lowest in the last decade since at least 1850
  • Global mean sea level has risen faster since 1900 than during any other century in the last 3000 years.

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” the summary of the report for policymakers states.

“Human influence is very likely the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s and the decrease in Arctic sea ice area between 1979–1988 and 2010–2019,” it says.

“Human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.”

Natural drivers in warming are factors such as solar and volcanic activity, but human activities are having a much higher impact, the report found.

“Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe,” it says.

These extremes include heatwaves, heavy precipitations, droughts, and tropical cyclones.

In the last forty years, each decade has been successively warmer than any decade that came before it since 1850.

The report sets out five potential futures for the climate that depend on our level of emissions over the coming years – whether they’re very high, high, medium, low or very low.

  • High and very high: GHG and CO2 emissions that double by 2100 and 2050
  • Intermediate (medium): GHG emissions and CO2 emissions remaining at current level until middle of the century
  • Very low and low: GHG emissions and CO2 emissions declining to net zero around or after 2050 followed by net negative CO2 emissions

Under all of the scenarios, global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the middle of the century, scientists expect.

Even with very low greenhouse gas emissions, global surface temperatures are very likely to be 1 to 1.8 degrees Celsius higher at the end of this century compared to between 1850 and 1900.

IPCC scenarios Projected increase in temperature warming in five scenarios: very low, low, medium, high and very high greenhouse gas emissions IPCC IPCC

However, if global net negative carbon emissions are achieved and sustained, the increase in surface temperatures would be gradually reversed.

Reductions in ethane emissions would also limit the warming effect and improve air quality.

Human efforts to remove carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global net negative emissions would “lower the atmospheric CO2 concentration and reverse surface ocean acidification”.

Europe

The report does not make predictions on a country-by-country basis, but looks at climate changes on a regional basis – and for Europe, that means an increase in hot extremes.

The frequency and intensity of hot weather extremes in Europe have risen in recent decades and are expected to continue increasing regardless of the greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

Meanwhile the frequency of cold spells and frost days will decrease while the relative sea level will rise in all European areas except the Baltic Sea.

Extreme sea level events are expected to become more frequent and intense, leading to coastal flooding, and shorelines on sandy costs will retreat.

In Western and Central Europe, climate scientists have observed an increase in hot extremes, in heavy precipitation, and in agricultural and ecological droughts since the 1950s.

If warming rises by two degrees Celsius or above, there are projected increases in pluvial flooding, river flooding, and droughts.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One this morning, Minister for Environment Eamon Ryan said that the report shows that “doing nothing is not an option”.

Ryan said that the “science is unequivocal that if we don’t make these changes”, the “consequences of not bringing our emissions down” would be drastic.

“We need to start now and we are prepared.”

He said the first important move would be the elimination of fossil fuels.

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    Mute briewee
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    Nov 18th 2011, 9:00 AM

    a doctor has to prescribe a these so they should be talking to doctors who over prescribe them. my doctor will not give one unless he feels its warrants it and with children he rather lets it run its course where possible. it is not the patients fault they feel sick and go to the doctors just to make sure it is ok, at the end of the check up the doctor decides what to prescribe not the patient

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    Mute InTrapWeTrust
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    Nov 18th 2011, 9:13 AM

    Fair point re doctors, but I know myself, a lot of people self diagnose and use anti-biotics they purchased abroad or got from friends which is obviously wrong and can really cause long term harm.

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    Mute Tom Mc Carthy
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    Nov 18th 2011, 9:30 AM

    ironically most don’t realise that if your illness is viral and you take antibiotics you actually lower your immunity further. I presume there is bad news on way from HSE, they have never taken this issue seriously but suddenly they need to look like they’re doing something?

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    Mute Sean Armstrong
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    Nov 18th 2011, 9:35 AM

    Nah it’s more of a global WHO thing. And the immunity thing… Not sure what you’re getting at there, maybe suppressing gut flora? Pretty unlikely on the antibiotics used by GPs for the amount of time that they are taken.

    More of an issue is people taking the full course of antibiotics. Take them all you silly people, we don’t say take for 5 days when 2 will do, it’s to ensure full eradication of the bug.

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    Mute Paula Nolan
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    Nov 18th 2011, 11:22 AM

    If I had read this 25 years ago, I might have been impressed at the HSE tackling the issue, and dictating best practice. I might have been impressed with a public information campaign. I’d have been impressed at a public information campaign being second in importance to a campaign to stop GPs giving antibiotics to people like they were lollipops. A quarter of a century later, I am far from impressed. Way too little, way too late. The waste of time and the waste of money involved by GPs prescribing unnecessary antibiotics pales into insignificance in the face of the incalculable loss of life, and loss of quality of life. For seven years they train, with the major help of our taxes, and then behave like sheer idiots in this regard. Over the decades, every time I hear a work colleague chime, “I’ve a bit of a cold so I’m going to the doc for some antibiotics” I get so angry. I know they’ll be sick again in two week’s time, because the antibiotics will mess with their immune system – their resistance to the person next to them on the bus coughing will be minimal to nought. We will never know how many people have died due to hospital acquired infection due to antibiotics being resistant to bacteria, due to antibiotic overuse and abuse. I know someone who chose not to have a surgery to reduce his chance of a cancer recurrence, because he’d witnessed so many people battling bacterial infections post surgery. On balance, he felt the risk of a recurrence was the lesser risk. I have to wonder ‘why now?’ with this unspeakably overdue statement from the HSE. Why not a quarter of a century ago? Is there a lucrative pharma deal languishing in the filing cabinet of a penthouse office suite? Or recently shredded? Are we getting Messages From Merkel that we have to act upon? Is there a good solid reason why insanity in this regard has prevailed for so long? Did someone in the HSE just take their reality check medication? Answers please.

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    Mute Saoilí
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    Nov 18th 2011, 9:55 AM

    The HSE has diagnosed the illness; people are taking too many antibiotics. But it has prescribed the wrong treatment: http://saoili.blogspot.com/2011/11/open-letter-to-dr-fidelma-fitzpatrick.html

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    Mute Paula Nolan
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    Nov 18th 2011, 10:07 AM

    Good letter. Personally I never go to a GP with a cold or flu unless I need a sick cert for work. I let it run its course. If it feels like it’s getting into other territories: strep throat, lung infection – then I’d go to GP.

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    Mute Sean
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    Nov 18th 2011, 11:04 AM

    Good article on this. People in this country do love their anti-biotics a bit too much…

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/antibiotic-superbugs-europe-idUSL5E7MH2A420111117

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    Mute Saffron Marriott
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    Nov 18th 2011, 1:52 PM

    I was in the UK over 20 years ago and I read a public information poster about doctors being incentivised not to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics. Why has it taken the HSE so long. Having spent the last 10 years working in childcare it depressed me to see how many children and staff are given antibiotics for viral illnesses. I can only think that doctors are doing this to justify the fees they charge. After all, if someone pays 45 euros for a doctors visit they don’t want to come away empty handed.

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    Mute Dark Stormnm
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    Nov 19th 2011, 10:58 PM

    I can only blame the gobshite Irish public for bacterial resistance to antibiotics and their overuse. I heard one lady proclaim that her doctor was a “rip-off” because he had diagnosed her throat infection as being viral, and had not prescribed antibiotics. She felt she had wasted 50 euro because she left his surgery without a prescription. Her attitude is not uncommon, and is commonly seen across Ireland with patients plaguing GP’s to prescribe antibiotics or harassing pharmacies for a “repeat” of some antibiotic they were prescribed many moons ago. All so “the kitchen sink can be thrown at the problem” and to “hit ” the infection, even if that infection is viral and they have been informed of this.

    But then again the Irish are complete gobshites in many ways from the IMF being here to voting FF in three times, to building housing estates without sewerage connected in the middle of nowhere, the contempt with which law and order is held, to the likes of Jackie Healy Rae being in the Dail or drunken Cowen singing off the back of lorries in Clara, etc.

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    Mute Oskar Fritsche
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    Nov 18th 2011, 12:21 PM

    So When are the HSE being disbanded the sooner the better.

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