Hello everybody
Below you will find an interesting and actual article about global warming, some facts, its causes, effects and the measures against it.
Communication of facts
"Nobody can feel safe - and it's getting worse and worse." Inger Andersen, Director of the UN Environment Program, summed up the key message of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the sixth assessment report published on Monday. The IPCC is not known for its alarmist tones, but for its scientifically sound reports, which are considered the gold standard in climate research. But the latest update confirms exactly this: Climate change is intensifying.
"What science establishes is currently happening before our eyes," stated Andersen. Flaming seas of flames at the gates of Athens and Euboea, in Turkey or on Italy's coasts have been flickering across our screens for days. Before that, it was torrential rains in Germany and also in this country, which caused entire regions to slide and flooded villages and towns. The new IPCC report makes it clear: These extreme weather events are not due to the “whims of nature” or the “wrath of the gods” (as Tamedia writes), they are a direct result of global warming. Their causes are man-made. And they arrived on our doorstep.
This is one of the key new findings since the last climate report eight years ago. Improved observational data and a deeper scientific understanding of the reactions of the climate system to man-made greenhouse gas emissions do not allow other conclusions to be drawn. The modeling and simulations have also become more precise, and development scenarios are correspondingly more reliable. And they can now be broken down to the regional level.
This does not bode well for Europe, where temperatures are rising faster than the global average. The CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are at record levels. If we continue to emit as much CO2 as in previous years, global warming will reach 1.5 degrees in the next ten years. 196 countries around the world - including Switzerland - committed themselves in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to well below two degrees compared to the second half of the 19th century. If we stay on the current emission path, we will exceed the two-degree limit in 2050.
Effects
And that means: extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and so-called “fire weather”, but also stormy precipitation occur more frequently and more violently. Around the Mediterranean Sea and in southern Europe there is increased drought and the risk of bush and forest fires increases. In Central and Western Europe, too, periods of heat and drought are likely to increase. Above all, however, we will be troubled by the increasingly frequent heavy rainfalls and the floods associated with them. Both can be felt even more intensely in the cities, as the models in the IPCC report make clear. In the Alps, where temperatures rise disproportionately, snow and glaciers are disappearing, and the thawing permafrost makes the mountains unstable.
Tourism regions have to fear for their guests on slopes, mountain paths and on the beach. But above all: How can we still provide for ourselves in the future when vegetable and wheat fields are repeatedly under water or, conversely, wither?
There is only one way to prevent such developments: We have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero net - and subito. Net zero refers to the earth's climate footprint and means that all emissions caused by humans have to be removed from the atmosphere by means of reduction measures. And not by offsetting the CO2 consumption in our own country abroad. This is window dressing. Neither will (large) technical measures from geoengineering to filtering out and burying CO2 save us.
Measures
The aim is to reduce CO2 emissions quickly and extensively. Otherwise we will no longer be able to limit global warming to two degrees. This was also emphasized by the IPCC chairman Hoesung Lee and the co-leader of the sixth report, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, at the media conference on Monday. Even in the best case scenario, global temperatures will only stabilize in twenty to thirty years.
Causes
The time for excuses is over. Fossil raw materials have to stay in the ground. Burning them is immediately banned or massively taxed - for example in the case of oil heating systems. Affected homeowners and people who are professionally dependent on a car are compensated: Compensation for people instead of emissions.
Switzerland proved that this works in the corona pandemic: Never before have so many billions been loosened so quickly - so that society can survive the crisis socially and economically without a total loss. We must act just as resolutely to combat global warming. Now.
Source: Nettonullundzwarsubito, article from 12.08.21 (woz.ch).
Tiziano Di Paola