The new head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a stark warning for climate alarmists “not to fall into a state of shock,” stating that the world will not come to an end if global temperatures happen to increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
British scientist Jim Skea, Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College in London, was elected last week as the head of the IPCC, the UN body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change and providing governments with information that they can use to develop climate policies.
“If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” Jim Skea told German news agency DPA. “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees, it will however be a more dangerous world,” he said in a separate interview given to weekly magazine Der Spiegel.
Under the Paris Climate Accords adopted in 2015, nations agreed to keep the rise in global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, and to preferably limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To achieve this, greenhouse gas emissions would need to be cut by roughly 50% by 2030. According to the IPCC’s report published in March, the earth is currently at around 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming, and current climate policies are projected to increase global warming by 3.2 degrees by 2100. To keep within the 1.5 degree limit, emissions need to be reduced by at least 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, and at least 60% by 2035.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2022 and 2021 were the continent’s hottest summers on record. Experts have also attributed extreme weather events in recent years (most recently soaring temperatures and wildfires in Southern Europe or floods in South Korea) to human-caused climate change and global warming.
Governments “have not put in place policies that are ambitious enough to allow the goals of the Paris Agreement to be met. That is absolutely for sure,” Jim Skea said after being elected as head of the IPCC. He told Der Spiegel, however, that there remained good reasons to be optimistic in the battle against climate change, “every measure we take to weaken climate change helps.” He noted that individuals can all play a part and that under his leadership IPCC would provide more targeted advice to specific groups, town planners, landowners, and businesses on how to battle climate change.
As we previously reported, a growing body of environmental activists and scientists are questioning the transition away from fossil fuels to so-called renewable energies, such as wind and solar power, both on grounds of feasibility and their negative environmental impacts. Meanwhile, scientists diverging from mainstream thinking about climate change, are being told to keep quiet on the matter. Nobel-prize-winning physicist John F. Clauser, who doesn’t believe there is a climate crisis, had his speech cancelled by the International Monetary Fund.
