Wanna limit global warming to 1.5°C? Get cracking
Enlarge / Coal: it's not an option. (credit: Kym Farnik)
One surprise in the international Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emissions was the addition of the aspirational goal of limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius. Nations have long stated that their aim was to avoid exceeding 2-degree warming (though they've largely failed to follow through with actions that would make that possible), and so scientists have studied that scenario in great detail. But nobody had been promising to keep this a 1.5-degree world, so the information was lacking.
A new study led by Joeri Rogelj of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis digs into this problem, providing a breakdown of plausible scenarios that will form the basis of future research efforts. This work uses computer models of the global economy to simulate the costs and effects of things like transitioning away from fossil fuels at different paces.
Scenario buildingThe simulations rely on a set of five scenarios that represent different socioeconomic futures. This includes idealistic scenarios like a world built around sustainability, with a global population of just 7 billion at the end of this century, rather than the expected 10 billion. At the other extreme, there's an all-consuming world in which energy demand grows rapidly and is fulfilled almost entirely by fossil fuels. This system is a little easier to wrap your head around than scenarios based purely on greenhouse gas concentrations because you can picture what these worlds are really like.
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