Human Fingerprint 'Unequivocal'
And it's about time the IPCC said so ...
The 6th Assessment Report from WG1 of the IPCC (Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental on Panel Climate Change) was released last week.
The full report will be a good cure for insomnia. It runs to about 1800 pages. The 40-odd page Summary for Policymakers is much more manageable, and still contains the main messages.
The very first statement in that Summary is a notable first.
It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
No mincing of words there. Every word in these documents counts, but that word “unequivocal” has never before appeared without caveat.
The Summary contains several telling messages supported by explanatory figures. I show just my top three below.
It’s been clear since the 1990s that temperatures have been increasing due to human effects. And every year that’s passed since then, it’s become clearer.
It would have been even worse if we hadn’t at the same time been spewing dirty smoke and ash into the air.
As the total atmospheric load of CO2 increases the temperature increases proportionately (and will continue to do so in the future by an amount that depends on what we do).
Please time the time to read the other 36 pages here …
Greta was right last week when she called New Zealand to task on our performance so far. The present Government is finally starting to take climate change seriously. But they have a hard task, made more difficult by the climate deniers whose selfishness has successfully stalled progress over the last decades. Fixing it now will be more than “inconvenient”. The changes needed will affect everybody, and they won’t be easy. Most of my friends still haven’t got their head around that fact.
But our government is sending out clear signals. The wise will listen to them because there will be winners and losers. Losers will fight the signals to embrace the status quo. They will continue to be part of the problem. The winners will embrace the signals and fight to be part of the solution.
Unlike other developed counties, most of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission profile is from the agricultural sector (who are also our greatest earners). Winners there will be be moving out of dairy farming into operations that are less intensive on GHG emissions. And they won’t be buying new farm utes every year. If they have enough money to buy a new one every year, perhaps they could avoid any carbon taxes on them (and perhaps even make a profit there) by at the same time replacing their 2nd car with a new electric one. If not, why not just hang on to the old one for a few more years.
Thanks for reading this. Previous posts on the intersection between Ozone, UV, Climate, and Health can be found at my UV & You area at Substack. Click below to subscribe for occasional free updates.