Mind the Gaps: How the UN Climate Plan Fails to Follow the Science

That old nebulous concept is invoked again: ‘the science’. It aims to sound like infallible authority, but that’s not what real science is. Talk of “uncharted territory” reminds us that most of Earth’s climate history also falls into that category. Made-up temperature limits based on the use of global averaging have little meaning in reality, as some politicians appear to have noticed.
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Climate negotiators meeting in Dubai last month pledged to chart a course for stabilizing the climate system using good science, says Fred Pearce at Yale Environment360.

But many scientists say these promises are at best ill-defined and at worst a travesty of good science — vague and full of loopholes.

The U.N. climate conference in Dubai agreed on an action plan for two key objectives: to keep the world on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), and to stay below this threshold by achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Negotiators pledged that both objectives would be pursued “in keeping with the science.”

But neither of the objectives have agreed definitions that would allow a judgment on whether they have been achieved.

Two studies published during the Dubai event exposed the problem and revealed wide gaps opening over both the 1.5-degree and net-zero targets, exposing the tensions between political expediency and scientific probity.

On the 1.5-degree target, British meteorologists reported in the journal Nature that a lack of agreement on how to measure global average temperatures is likely to delay formal recognition that the threshold has been exceeded by up to a decade.

The result, warns lead author Richard Betts of the U.K. Met Office’s Hadley Centre, will be “distraction and delay just at the point when climate action is most urgent,” resulting in temperature “overshoot” and a need for highly expensive — and unproven — actions later to reverse warming.

Meanwhile a study headed by Matthew Gidden, a climate modeler at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, found that the rules governing how countries can declare they have reached net-zero emissions are fixed so that governments will be able to claim compliance years ahead of scientific reality.

Critical issues have been under the radar

These critical technical issues have been largely under the radar until now — in part, say concerned researchers, because scientists have not wanted to confuse or naysay policymakers looking to build public support for climate action.

But the discrepancies raise serious questions about whether governments are truly committed to abiding by the science. “Politicians are trying to find an easy way to meet their pledges,” said IIASA forest ecologist Dmitry Shchepashchenko.

Yet the urgency for resolving the uncertainties is growing. The past year has seen the climate system enter what researchers are calling “uncharted territory.” About a third of days in 2023 exceeded the 1.5-degree threshold, and September was 1.8 degrees warmer than preindustrial times.

Full article here.