Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says – DW – 07/30/2023
www.dw.com
Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's IPCC climate panel, said it was not helpful to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity.

In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.

He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.

  • @AA5BEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    There are quite a few hypothetical tipping points where the climate can go catastrophically wrong. We don’t understand them as well as climate change, can’t as easily predict how likely they are or when they’re inevitable, but we’d like to avoid them.

    The 1.5°C target is where we expect significant disruptions to society, expensive impact, hardship for the most vulnerable. But we can deal with it if it stops there. However as we shoot past that target, those disruptions get bigger and more expensive but also those tipping points become more likely. I really really hope we can avoid them