Charles Rotter
The Associated Press ran its story on the UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2026 under the headline “US is a big reason for the world losing ground in the fight against climate change, UN report says.” The size of the big reason turns up in the eleventh paragraph. Steve Milloy flagged it.
Report lead author Anne Olhoff, director of UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre, said the U.S. policy change will likely add one-tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) to global temperatures by the end of the century.
One-tenth of a degree, 74 years from now.
AP also says where that tenth sits:
The new calculations say that if countries do all they promise in the climate fighting plans they submitted to the United Nations, by 2100 the globe will be 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times. If the world continues on its current path — without national promises — it will be 2.8 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the last half of the 19th century, the same as last year’s projection.
So the tenth only shows up in the scenario where every country keeps every promise. The current-path number, the one built on what governments are actually doing, hasn’t moved since last year. The U.S. promise that went away was the Biden administration’s target of 61% to 66% below 2005 levels by 2035.
It isn’t news this year either. Last year’s report already had it: “the upcoming withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement will cancel another 0.1°C,” UNEP wrote in November 2025.
The report itself names two causes for this year’s higher number:
“This is a worse outcome than expected last year, as a result of the formal withdrawal of the United States of America from the Paris Agreement and revised estimates of historical emissions,” the report said.
The lead author gives the whole tenth to the first one.
Then AP goes to outside voices.
“This report shows that America’s retreat isn’t just a political embarrassment. It has real consequences for the planet and for millions of people around the world,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate organization. “An extra tenth of a degree might sound insignificant, but in climate terms it is enormous. It means more dangerous heat waves, more destructive floods, more failed harvests and more lives lost. For vulnerable communities in Africa, already living on the front lines of the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters. These are not abstract numbers. They are human lives.”
It does sound insignificant. The number came from the report’s lead author.
Hare said that extra one-tenth of a degree pushes an additional 140 million people “into dangerously hot conditions” and increases the odds of the collapse of the Amazon rain forest or ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. It also would cost the world and shave about $1.2 trillion from the global economy, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.
The 140 million comes from a 2023 paper in Nature Sustainability led by Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter. In Exeter’s words, “for every 0.1°C of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat.” In that paper, “dangerous heat” means living somewhere with an average temperature of 29°C or higher. That number was worked out for warming above today’s levels. Hare applies it to a tenth added on top of 2.6°C in the year 2100. AP gives no source for Mann’s $1.2 trillion, and I couldn’t find one.
Milloy says a tenth of a degree isn’t even measurable. NASA disagrees, on paper. GISS puts the 95% uncertainty of its global annual mean at about 0.05°C for the last 50 years. That figure comes from statistics across thousands of stations and ships. It is not what the instruments can resolve. Pat Frank, in a 2023 paper in Sensors, put the lower limit from thermometer resolution alone at ±0.25°C (2σ) for the record before 1981, before adding the systematic errors of the sensors in the field. By that measure, a tenth of a degree is lost in the noise of any single year.
The tenth in this story will never face a thermometer anyway. It is the gap between two model projections of 2100, one with an American promise and one without. Only one of those worlds will happen, so there will never be anything to measure it against.
How much of the increase came from the revised historical emissions, if the United States accounts for the whole tenth?
And where does Mann’s claim about the $1.2 trillion come from? I couldn’t find it.
As a climate layman and long-time reader of WUWT, it amazes me how endless and deep the mind rot of the activists and believers really goes. Especially in the scientific ranks.
‘Dangerous heat above 29C’! The average daytime ‘summer’ (MJJAS) temperature for the entire state of Florida is ~32C. Somehow, Floridians aren’t endangered.
And if the US no longer playing along with Paris means a difference of 0.1C, then not playing along was definitely the right decision—now twice.
We sweat pretty much year round, although I did put a hoodie on to watch an early Monday morning SpaceX launch. Also I keep an eye out for sea level change from my back door, haven’t noticed any.
It’s the 0.2C by 2201 that I’m worried about.
Yeah, if we don’t do X, a nonmeasureable bad thing will happen?
An’ you know what? That tenth of a degree will probably be the result of warmer nights & warmer winters just like the Beeton Banton tag team says.
Story tip!
Better ways to spend ‘climate cash’. By Indermit Gill and Bjorn Lomborg
– – – – – – – – –
We need to focus on the best ways to help the poor. Climate isn’t one
Relatively inexpensive investments in public health, nutrition, cheap energy and education have much bigger payoffs in poverty reduction
https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-need-focus-on-best-ways-help-poor
Poverty reduction isn’t the goal of the Climate Crusaders.
Poverty expansion is their goal. The poor are easier to control.
Poverty is a key ingredient to reducing the world’s population to levels dictated in The Population Bomb (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1968) and others.
Release the SO2 ! A little acid rain never hurt anyone. SO2 will lower the temp by 0.01 C in a few years..,…case closed.
Some warmists have said that global warming/climate change poses a greater risk than even nuclear war. If so, they shouldn’t mind the resumption of low-level nuclear tests in the desert. That’s instant geoengineering to cool things down.
How on earth do these knuckleheads keep their jobs?
Fear sells as does guild and anger. Greed plays into it as well.
Typo. GUILT, not guild.
A laughable number — GISS has zero clues about real measurement uncertainty, like most or all of climastrology.
Absolutely! It doesn’t matter how tightly uncertain values cluster in the statistics, they are still uncertain.
When the best stations in the world, USCRN, have a resolution of 0.1C and an accuracy of ±0.3C, exactly how can GISS possibly extract measurements with a ±0.05C. Even assuming the 0.3 is a rectangular distribution and dividing by the √3 give a standard uncertainty of ±0.17. Expanding that by a factor of two to get a 95% uncertainty and rounding give ±0.34C. And remember that is only for one category in an uncertainty budget.
Contrarians errors propagate, at least within its matrix.
Other kinds of errors cancel out.
Another “expert” in metrology pontificates…
Please, Monte. It’s ninja.
*click*
A pointless and meaningless guess.
Would you put your faith in an airline which said there was a 95% chance of not crashing on any given flight?
GISS is obviously populated with dimwits, who boast that are wrong 1 time in 20, but don’t know which one it is!
Oh well, that’s the standard of intellectual brilliance you would expect from civil servants who believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter. And of course, they are believed by even more stupid people in the form of politicians and journalists!
All good for a laugh anyway.
So how much was the temperature reduced when the USA converted most of its’ coal fired stations to natural gas?
Good point. And how much did the CO2 readings on Mauna Loa decrease? Not a hair.
And nowhere in the report did the UN acknowledge China changing their reporting that erased the last five years of increased emissions.
The climate cult ignores the 60+ year cycle related to the AMO index. There is solid evidence we are in the process of moving into the next cool phase right now. We could start seeing the initial cooling effects as early as 2027. Since 2027 is also likely to be a La Nina year, the overall cooling is likely to push global temperatures back down well below the silly 1.5 C mark.
If you want to look way out to 2100 we should also be in the following cool phase by that time. Not that anyone will be worried about climate change by then.
Not anybody with any sense anyway.
Now do China and India
Elephant in the room (if we were to accept the CO2 control knob premise) — China, India, SE Asia – areas responsible for the continued and expected lion’s share of GHG emissions growth. Those areas largely duck any accountability. Energy poverty and economic self-destruction are far more a threat than a relatively mild increase in global average temperature.
Glad to see this.
I posted this yesterday.
And it continues, non-stop.
United Nations report highlights significant increase in U.S. climate pollution
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/21/nx-s1-6003553/america-oil-gas-coal-climate-change-trump-carbon-emissions
References UNEP
Emissions Gap Report 2026
https://www.unep.org/en/publications/report/emissions-gap-report-2026
The UN is more concerned with the US’s $Green$ that with the US going “green”.
A tenth of a degree here and a tenth of a degree there and soon we are still talking about nothing of consequence.
Where does Mann’s £1.2 trillion come from you ask?
Have you checked aisle nine in Wegmans……
It’s his fee for posting that number.
I wonder what the heat wave trend is starting from the 1920s instead of the 1960s or 2000.