AI: World likely to hit key warming threshold in 10-12 years
Associated PressThe world will likely breach the internationally agreed-upon climate change threshold in about a decade, and keep heating to break through a next warming limit around mid-century even with big pollution cuts, artificial intelligence predicts in a new study that’s more pessimistic than previous modeling. “And this paper may be the beginning of the end of the 1.5C target.” Stanford University’s Noah Diffenbaugh, a study co-author, said the world is on the brink of the 1.5-degree mark in “any realistic emissions reduction scenario.” Avoiding a 2-degree rise, he said, may depend on nations meeting zero-emissions goals by the middle of this century. Each year, government climate negotiators at a United Nations summit proclaim that they have managed to “keep 1.5 alive.” But with the latest study there’s a divide among scientists on how true that really is. Some scenarios do see temperatures warming past the mark but then coming back down, something called “overshoot.” Other scientists not involved with the study, such as University of Pennsylvania’s Michael Mann and Climate Analytics’ Bill Hare and Carl-Friedrich Schleussner maintain 1.5 is still alive.