Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
@mattmcgrathbbc on Twitter
24 July 2019
Do you remember the good old days when we had “12 years to save the planet”?
Now it seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030.
But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.
The idea that 2020 is a firm deadline was eloquently addressed by one of the world’s top climate scientists, speaking back in 2017.
The jet stream drags tropical continental air from Africa over to Europe
“The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and now director emeritus of the Potsdam Climate Institute.
The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time.
“I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival,” said Prince Charles, speaking at a reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers recently.
So why are the next 18 months so important?
The Prince was looking ahead to a series of critical UN meetings that are due to take place between now and the end of 2020.
Ever since a global climate agreement was signed in Paris in December 2015, negotiators have been consumed with arguing about the rulebook for the pact.
But under the terms of the deal, countries have also promised to improve their carbon-cutting plans by the end of next year.
One of the understated headlines in last year’s IPCC report was that global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C.
Current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit. Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5.
As countries usually scope out their plans over five and 10 year timeframes, if the 45% carbon cut target by 2030 is to be met then the plans really need to be on the table by the end of 2020.
HT/Kent N
You just have to laugh at alarmists like Bonny Prince Chuck. Every year they announce this year is a no turning back tipping point and next year when nothing has changes they announce it again, and nothing changes.
In 1990 the alarmists declared we must cut CO2 from 1990 levels or there is no future, today global CO2 is 60% greater than 1990 and nothing has changed. Current projections of CO2 including reduction initiatives indicate by 2050 global CO2 will be 400% above 1990. And I’m prepared to bet nothing will have changed other than the weather being nicer and we will be able to grow more food for the 9+ billion people.
“You just have to laugh at alarmists like Bonny Prince Chuck”
Yup……
“The Prince, who has two Jaguars, two Audis, a Range Rover and still drives an Aston Martin given to him by the Queen on his 21st birthday, said developers had a duty to put public transport and the pedestrian at the heart of their housing schemes.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/6216049/Prince-Charles-urges-people-to-abandon-car-in-favour-of-walking-and-public-transport.html
It is an old article, I’m sure he owns fewer cars now.
I believe he had his classic convertible E type converted to electric drive to save the planet.
“I believe he had his classic convertible E type converted to electric drive to save the planet.”
Isn’t that punishable by death?
Maybe he could offer to give some of his subjects a ride when they need to get to the green grocers? I mean, the Aston Martin IS a two-seater, right?
Contemplating this maroon becoming a monarch, all I can say is “God Bless George Washington!”
Do you mean the mass of anthro CO2 emissions? The projections sound suspect.
Yes Anthro, today less than one billion people live in first world conditions, China and India aim to have their entire three billion populations lifted from third world to second world by 2050 with 50% living in first world conditions, and Africa and South America have similar expectations.
The only way this can be achieved is by burning fossil fuels, and OPEC, Canada, Australia, USA and others are more than happy to sell it to them.
Dry Lakebed Thumbnail ☑️
Save The Earth ☑️
Its Really Gonna Happen This Time ☑️
Dumb Readers ☑️
Andrew
Okay, so da Prince is running his silly yap again. Is anyone really paying attention? I had so hoped his mother would outlive him, too.
So, no one has yet addressed the really important question: What if the snow’ice stops melting in the spring, or doesn’t melt on time, and it snows right into June in the northern hemisphere and October in the sourthern Hemisphere? Then what will those nutballs marketing climate change do? They don’t have enough common sense to stock the larder, you know.
We now have TRUMP Mark two, in the form of the half a American ,
Boris Johnson as the UK’s PM.
So unless the Warmers again move the goalposts, we will see something
happen very soon. Even I will hopefully still be around when the day finally
comes.
MJE VK5ELL
It’s a terrible thought that Chucky could be King one day. It will be the death of our Royal Family ethos and therefore the British Constitution
Without the Royal Family, Britain has no tourism.
Ahhh – Come on?!
Stonehenge, and, for the Japanese, the Lavender Field near Banstead!
Auto
Mexico and Egypt have you beat for piles of stone.
What did the Mexican Fireman name his 2 sons? Hose A and Hose B
How bout Big Ben and Piccadilly Square?…The English pubs are the best.
When I visited in 94, I went to Stonehenge and Windsor, so I guess I hit both main tourist zones.
How about the Porton Down chemical warfare lab, near Salisbury, where Russian tourists did in the Skripals with Novichok, at least according to ex-PM Mayhem.
Never fear though, according to Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies, bring baby-wipes in case of exposure to the lethal agent.
Clearly this is the end finally. There is no chance that countries will have done enough to slow the growth in emissions. China will make that a certainty. So come 2021 we can finally stop worrying about global warming because it will be too late. Anything done will be futile. So we can stop spending money trying to change the weather and spend it on real problems, schools, hospitals.
If only. You can be sure they will continue to move the goal posts.
Yes “The climate maths is brutally clear”. It proves that logic behind it is duff.
This is also being shoved down our throats in Ireland. In the Irish Times today we find an article, “Climate activists are right to turn up the heat.” The alarmist writer begins with these words, “Desperate times call for truly desperate measures.” He and his followers believe they have science on their side and see a rebellion as the solution.
However, in his reasoning, he does not reflects a clear understanding of how science works or how it can ever hope to thrive in a non-critical and non-questioning environment. If the doom scenarios do not pan out there will be no repercussions for this and other like-minded environmentalists. The worst is that only billions will have been defrauded off gullible people.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/climate-activists-are-right-to-turn-up-the-heat-1.3966161
One can never calculate the opportunity cost of political insanity hampering an efficient economy.
Ireland should start by declaring war on China and India.
I have just done something to ease the risk from global warming and its effect on civilisation.
Here in the UK we are enjoying a rare few days of summer sunny days, with temperatures up around 30 deg C.
It is lovely, it is summer ice cream weather, and I have put a couple of beers in the fridge to help control the impact warm weather has on beer. Normally here in the UK you don’t have to put beer in the fridge, it is cold enough straight from the cold slab in the larder.
I hope my actions are not too disturbing for the climate alarmists to accept. 🙂
More than sunny summer days. A new July record for July. 38.1 deg C at Cambridge
“A new July record for July.”
Phew! That was close! I thought it might have been a new July record for January.
I have a UK friend who is fainting and taking off work and calling the paramedics because she can’t deal with heat we have here in the South US all the time. I am being polite as she rants and raves about climate change but I don’t really have any idea what to say. I know she has some health and mental issues causing her to behave in this manner because if she just took it easy and drank some water she would be fine.
I tell you what! All those who believe in CO2 sponsored Global Warming can go right ahead now and cut off all their CO2. The rest of us who know better will just go on as usual doing normal things. That sounds like a pretty fair idea. We can all get together in 18 months and see if the World is still here!
These global warming alarmists are not stupid. They know that the warm regime will eventually end and obviously so. (It peaked already.) They make their arguments and set their dates for a purpose. They say “do what we insist to avoid catastrophe” so they can take credit for when the cycle turns cooler. It’s Hansen’s 20-year admonition that corresponded with the solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24. They have now accelerated the schedule to 18 months because it appears the Centennial Gleisberg Cycle has kicked in between solar cycles 24 and 25 with comparisons to the Dalton Minimum already.
Eighteen months ends in January 2021… I suspect Ol’ Charles must be hoping Trump loses his re-election bid, and a malleable Progressive Watermelon/Neo-Green wins office in the US. January 20, 2021 is Inauguration Day. Similar to when Obama took office on January 20, 2009, and:
“…generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth….”
In the U.S. we have the Senate filibuster (super-majority vote required) to stop passage of insane major legislation such as the GND and any of the stupid RINO alternatives.
A Democrat Senate super-majority gave us Obamacare. Look at how poorly that one worked out.
And Obama didn’t even end the war. But he did start one or two. Damn the JV!
Obama: Worst President Evah!
He screwed up everything he ever did after he was elected, including the coup attempt against Trump. You don’t think James Comey and Clapper came up with all those treasonous/seditious acts on their own, do you? Comey and Clapper and all these criminals were acting on orders from higher up. Bureaucrats like these don’t take action on their own initiative. That’s a good way to get fired, so they don’t do it.
Obama doesn’t have any respect for the United States. And it shows. His wife, Michelle, said right after Obama was sworn in that that was the first time she had every felt pride in the United States. Obama’s pastor for 20 years, preached: God damn America!, NOT God Bless Amerca!
The Obama’s listened to hate speech like that for 20 years. They must have been sympathetic to the message.
And with the coup attempt we see Obama had no respect for the U.S. Constitution. It was an impediment in his way and he took illegal steps to remove it. It’s what dictators do. They put themselves first and the people last.
I believe you’ve hit the nail on the head. This 18 months thing is being trotted out to reenergize the “getting older and lazier” base leading up to the US house and presidential election. So obvious.
Bingo!
The common folk aren’t listening, especially since it’s not apparent to most of the non-eco activists that there is a problem, so the followers of the AGW religion have to get more and more shrill about the need to turn our lives over to a global govt, in spite of all the evidence that the world really isn’t heating up and in fact may be heading into an extended cold period, thanks to a sun that is going into hibernation.
If China, India and all other countries in the Developing Nations category don’t have to halt their emissions until 2030, isn’t the 18 months deadline already a lost cause? So why even bother; just relax and adapt to warmer temperatures because we have further confirmation that no one intends to do anything nearly enough to arrest the problem.
+1, at a minimum.
Yeah, but you don’t get attention that way.
“The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020,”
Note the use of ‘brutally clear’ and ‘may’ in the same paragraph.
So what is it? Brutally clear that the possibilities are wide open? Do these people thing before they make these statements?
No, they rely on the readers not thinking.
Dave, they know that critical thinking stopped being taught in higher-ed sometime during the “moral majority” years, when the “born-again neo-conservatives” were in control. That’s the sort of education that neither ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative movements want imparted to the drones, so since Marxists dominate the present paradigm of higher-ed there has been no action to reverse that “neo-con” era abolishment of common sense during this 21st century.
Without critical thought the masses are easily manipulated into voluntarily voting themselves into Marxist oblivion with all its accompanying perks, only to find out too late that the media was distorting the facts and failing to give all pertinent information in order to manipulate their opinions.
I think my standard response to this nonsense will be, “Clearly, no one is going to take meaningful action, particularly India or China, so what are you doing to prepare for it?” Then chide them for being short-sighted and foolish for believing disaster was imminent, yet not preparing for it.
By God, jtom, you’ve hit upon it! If the alarmists acknowledge the Third World’s projected CO2 emissions, why are they exhorting the West to wear hair shirts? If they don’t, they are liars.
Is there a liner or logarithmic reduction in timeframes? Does this mean that in 18 months, we’ll only have 6 days, then 3 hours etc. etc.? Sarc
Ah, Hans J. Schellnhuber, His Grace’s chief quasi-scientist. Enough information for me to disregard the source.
That man is on the anti-Christ squad.
Makes me wonder why an educated, wealthy person wants to destroy humankind and not just one but many. What do they get out of this destruction?
Given that this is an attempt to wring every concession possible out of the hysteria before it ends; is it more likely that they think the game is unsustainable because populations are wising up, or do they already have the next manufactured crisis ready to go?
The Prince is as pathetic as the last Emperor of China.
Chuck has enough room on those ears for solar panels .
It is rather sad that people who some may see as credible make absurd predictions
leading to policies that annually kill thousands of people in the UK .
He ain’t going to be wearing that crown .