Guardian: Planet has just 5% chance of reaching Paris climate goal

[The_jackalope]

Planet has just 5% chance of reaching Paris climate goal, study says

According to the University of Washington study, there is a 90% likelihood that temperatures will rise between 2C and 4.9C by 2100. This would put the world in the mid-range warming scenarios mapped out by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It negates the most optimistic outcome as well as the worst case, which would see temperatures climb nearly 6C beyond the pre-industrial era.

Rather than look at how greenhouse gases will influence temperature, the new research analyzed the past 50 years of trends in world population, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and carbon intensity, which is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic activity.

After building a statistical model covering a range of emissions scenarios, the researchers found that carbon intensity will be a crucial factor in future warming. Technological advances are expected to cut global carbon intensity by 90% over the course of the century, with sharp declines in China and India – two newly voracious consumers of energy. However, this decline still will not be steep enough to avoid breaching the 2C limit.

[Duppers]

1. "negates the most optimistic outcome as well as the worst case.."

Negates the worst case. That's encouraging but I'm not hanging hopes on this because 6C would mean we're pretty much screwed anyway.

Reported in The Independent:

The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.