The world may cross the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold in seven years as fossil fuel CO2 emissions continue to rise, scientists warned on Tuesday (Dec 5), urging countries at the COP28 talks to “act now” on coal, oil and gas pollution.
Battle lines are being drawn over the future of fossil fuels at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, with big polluters trying to see off calls for an agreement to phase out the carbon-intensive energy responsible for most of the human-caused greenhouse gas.
Fossil fuel CO2 pollution rose 1.1 per cent last year, according to an international consortium of climate scientists in their annual Global Carbon Project assessment, with surging emissions in China and India – now the world’s first and third biggest emitters.
They estimated that there is a 50 per cent chance warming will exceed the Paris deal’s goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius over multiple years by around 2030, although they noted uncertainties around warming from non-CO2 greenhouse gases.
“It is getting more and more urgent,” lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter University’s Global Systems Institute, told reporters.
“The time between now and 1.5 degrees is shrinking massively, so to keep a chance to stay below 1.5 degrees, or very close to 1.5 degrees, we need to act now.”
The more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius goal has since taken on greater urgency as evidence emerges that warming beyond this could trigger dangerous and irreversible tipping points.
To keep to that limit, the UN’s IPCC climate science panel has said CO2 emissions need to be halved this decade.
That is becoming a more challenging task as emissions continue to rise, the Global Carbon Project found.
Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research, said carbon dioxide emissions are now 6 per cent higher than when countries signed the Paris deal.
“Things are going in the wrong direction,” he said.
The research found fossil fuels accounted for 36.8 billion tonnes of a total of 40.9 billion tonnes of CO2 estimated to be emitted this year.
Several major polluters have clocked falling CO2 emissions this year – including a 3 per cent decrease in the United States and a 7.4 per cent drop across the European Union.
But China, which accounts for almost a third of global emissions, is expected to see a 4 per cent rise in fossil fuel CO2 this year, the research found, with increases in coal, oil and gas as the country continues to rebound from its COVID-19 lockdowns.
Meanwhile, a rise in CO2 emissions of more than 8 per cent in India means the country has now overtaken the EU as the third-biggest fossil fuel emitter, scientists said.
In both India and China, increasing demand for power is outstripping a significant rollout of renewables, said Peters.
Emissions from aviation rose by 28 per cent this year as it rebounded from pandemic-era lows.
The research was published in the journal Earth System Science Data.
The Earth has already warmed some 1.2 degrees Celsius, unleashing ferocious heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms.
Temperatures this year have surged to the highest in recorded history and the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has said 2023 was already around 1.4 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline by October.
Going above 1.5 degrees Celsius for a single year would not breach the Paris deal, however, which is measured over decades.
