The Met Office has warned that at some point between now and 2023, the lowest target for global average temperature increases set by the Paris agreement could be reached, at least temporarily. In a five year forecast released yesterday, the organisation’s meteorologists said that there was a 10% chance that global warming (currently running at an increase in average global temperatures of 0.2C per decade) could combine with an El Niňo event to produce a year in which global annual temperatures were raised to 1.5C above pre-Industrial levels.
More than two weeks of climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland that ended on 15 December 2018 have resulted in clarity for the ‘rulebook’ that will dictate how the Paris agreement of 2015 is actually put into force. But the ambition expressed before the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP 24) - that of increasing government targets around the global for cutting carbon emissions - has not been successful.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations’ body of climate experts, has stated in its provisional report ‘State of the Climate in 2018’ that the last four years have been the hottest on record, whilst the top 20 hottest years have all occurred in the last 22 years. If current trends continue, global average temperatures look set to rise between 3C and 5C by 2100.
The US National Climate Report, published last week, combines submissions from 13 separate federal agencies. It states that climate change is already harming the lives of some Americans, with ‘substantial damages’ likely to be caused if temperatures continue to rise in an uncontrolled way.
A new report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the body for the United Nations’ meteorology experts confirms that levels of the main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane - are now all at record levels.
In a new report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), it has been recommended that tree planting should double by 2020, with land currently used for meat and diary production being converted into woodland.
The report states that beef and lamb production in the UK should be reduced by 20-50%. This would free up between 3 and 7 million hectares of grassland, which could then be planted with trees. These newly-created forests could help to soak up CO2 from the atmosphere, reduce the impacts of flooding and provide a new source of biofuel.
The lexicographers from Collins Dictionary have examined 4.5 billion words of text in order to name 'single-use' as their word of the year for 2018. The word, which refers to items that are made to be used once then thrown away has seen a four-fold increase in its usage since 2013.
The European Parliament yesterday backed a proposed directive to ban single use plastics by 571 votes to 53. The proposal suggests banning single use items like plastic straws, cotton buds, straws, drink stirrers, disposable plates and cutlery by 2021, while enforcing the recycling of 90% of plastic bottles by 2025.
In the same week that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a key report giving the world 12 years to drastically reduce its carbon emissions, permission has been granted for fracking to go ahead in England for the first time since 2011.
