Is the world’s fate already locked due to climate change?

By Rajendra Shende

Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, IIT Alumnus and former director UNEP

The world today is ‘locked’ in more sense than one. Brutal inequality, terrorism, bullying on territorial claims, and threats of nuclear missile attacks have all locked the civilisation in a spiral trajectory of global hazard.

Recent climate studies by Nature Climate Change, published on 31st July 2017, expose that the world has ‘locked’ itself in a way that has never happened in the human history of more than eight hundred thousand years. It reveals a steady and steep rise in the Earth’s temperature due to human-induced Green House Gases (GHGs) that have already been emitted in the past, thereby locking the fate of the Earth due to climate change.

What research predicts

As per the study, there is only a 1% chance, irrespective of global action, to limit the temperature rise at 1.5°C. This is the lower limit of the range decided in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Article 2 of the Paris Agreement aims at “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”. 

Research published in May 2017 in Journal Geophysical Research Letters stated that global warming is already on the way to touch 1.5°C. It will cross that figure 9 years from now, no matter what efforts are made to the contrary.

Many scientists, including those who wrote fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warn that crossing of 2°C above pre-industrial levels would be catastrophic to humanity. Beyond 2°C is called the ‘death-zone’. It may trigger ‘runaway’ climate change, leading to an uncontrolled chain of extreme events leading to the beginning of extinction of life on the Earth!

Beginning of a global catastrophe?

European Commission’s Joint Research Centre published a study this month, based on a study by Lancet Planetary Health, that hinted at the beginning of the global catastrophe. It said that the deaths caused by extreme weather in Europe could rise from 3,000 a year between 1981 and 2010 to 50 times that figure, that is, 152,000 a year between 2071 and 2100. Europeans have the best social health system in the world to protect themselves. The death numbers in Europe would look minuscule compared to what would happen in developing countries.

Another worrying impact of climate change is the melting of glaciers, permafrost, Arctic and Antarctic. The ice-melt would release massive emissions of GHGs like CO2 and Methane trapped for centuries under the ice. These would warm the planet further and cause more melting—thus ‘locking’ the Earth in a vicious cycle.

Last week, a study published in the Geological Society of London revealed that there are 91 volcanoes buried under the ice in Antarctica. If they are exposed, they can belch out massive amounts of GHGs and warm the planet at an unprecedented speed, thawing more ice. Less ice also means less white surface to reflect the sunlight and heat back into space, thereby causing more warming.

Troubled waters

As the world’s oceans warm, the marine life is at risk of extinction. Further, massive stores of dissolved carbon dioxide may bubble out into the atmosphere and amplify the temperature rise.  

This month’s ‘breaking news’ was the breaking away of the large iceberg—three times the size of Mauritius—from the fourth largest ice shelf of Antarctica. The icebergs, being floating masses, do not raise the sea level. However, the glaciers of Antarctica, which are held in place by walls of icebergs, would now start emptying into the sea, thus raising the sea-level.

The possibility of disruption in the oceanic currents has become a hot debate in the realm of oceanography. The debate revolves around huge ocean currents called heat conveyor belts, responsible for keeping the northern countries warm and causing healthy rain patterns, including monsoon. The contention is that the melting ice from poles may cause these currents to slow down, stop or reverse. The consequences are not well established. They are scenes inside the ‘black hole’ of uncertainties which may inspire science fictions of catastrophes. However, some scientists have already observed the slowing down of the ocean currents.

Political hiccups

To top it all, on 4th August, the Trump government gave notice to UN that: “United States intends to exercise its right to withdraw from the (Paris Climate) Agreement.” This would “slow down the conveyor belts of diplomacy”, as per one of the Climate negotiators from a small island country.

The Paris Climate Agreement came into force on 4th November 2016. As per Article 28 of the agreement, withdrawal by a country that has already ratified the Protocol—which the USA did under Obama—is possible only after three years from the date of entry. Further, such a withdrawal would be effective “upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt of the notification of the withdrawal“. The earliest official withdrawal of the USA from Paris Climate Agreement, therefore, can take place only on 4th November 2020, around the time when next President of USA would be declared.  

Is Trump locked in Article 28 of the Paris Climate Agreement or is the world locked in Trumponian ambiguity? Whatever be the case, the key to unlocking the climate puzzle would be a flood of positive efforts at a planetary scale.

Featured Image Source: Flickr