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https://theconversation.com/cop28-president-is-wrong-science-clearly-shows-fossil-fuels-must-go-and-fast-219128>
"According to the president of COP28, the latest round of UN climate
negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, there is “no science” indicating that
phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to restrict global heating to 1.5°C.
President Sultan Al Jaber is wrong. There is a wealth of scientific evidence
demonstrating that a fossil fuel phase-out will be essential for reining in the
greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. I know because I have
published some of it.
Back in 2021, just before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, my colleagues
and I published a paper in
Nature entitled
Unextractable fossil fuels in a
1.5°C world. It argued that 90% of the world’s coal and around 60% of its oil
and gas needed to remain underground if humanity is to have any chance of
meeting the Paris agreement’s temperature goals.
Crucially, our research also highlighted that the production of oil and gas
needed to start declining immediately (from 2020), at around 3% each year until
2050.
This assessment was based on a clear understanding that the production and use
of fossil fuels, as the primary cause of CO₂ emissions (90%), needs to be
reduced in order to stop further heating. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) says that net zero CO₂ emissions will only be reached
globally in the early 2050s, and warming stabilised at 1.5°C, if a shift away
from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources begins immediately.
If global emissions and fossil fuel burning continue at their current rates,
this warming level will be breached by 2030.
Since the publication of our
Nature paper, scientists have modelled hundreds
of scenarios to explore the world’s options for limiting warming to 1.5°C. Many
feature in the latest report by the IPCC. Here is what they tell us about the
necessary scale of a fossil fuel phase-out."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
