Nov 24, 2025 05:55 PM
The world lost the climate gamble. Now it faces a dangerous new reality
https://theconversation.com/the-world-lo...ity-270392
INTRO: Ten years ago the world’s leaders placed a historic bet. The 2015 Paris agreement aimed to put humanity on a path to avert dangerous climate change. A decade on, with the latest climate conference ending in Belém, Brazil, without decisive action, we can definitively say humanity has lost this bet.
Warming is going to exceed 1.5°C. We are heading into “overshoot” within the next few years. The world is going to become more turbulent and more dangerous. So, what comes after failure?
Our attempt to answer that question gathered the Earth League – an international network of scientists we work with – for a meeting in Hamburg earlier this year. After months of intensive deliberation, its findings were published this week, with the conclusion that humanity is “living beyond limits”.
Exceed 1.5°C and not only do extreme climate events, like droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves grow in number and severity, impacting billions of people, we also approach tipping points for large Earth regulating systems like the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Tropical coral reef systems, livelihood for over 200 million people, are unlikely to cope with overshoot.
This translates to existential risks for billions of people. Not far in the future, but within the next few years for extreme events, and within decades for tipping points.
The missed opportunities between 1997 and 2015 are the failures of the Kyoto protocol to bend the global emissions curve. There then followed a missed decade since the Paris agreement.
The beauty of Paris – getting all countries to commit collectively to cut emissions – has been undermined by the voluntary mechanisms to achieve it. So while staying well below 2°C is legally binding, the actions within national plans are not.
We are now at a critical juncture... (MORE - details)
When trade routes shift, so do clouds: researchers uncover ripple effects of new global shipping regulations
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1107134
EXCERPTS: When militia attacks disrupted shipping lanes in the Red Sea, few imagined the ripple effects would reach the clouds over the South Atlantic. But for Florida State University atmospheric scientist Michael Diamond, the rerouting of cargo ships offered a rare opportunity to clarify a pressing climate question — How much do cleaner fuels change how clouds form?
In research published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Diamond and FSU Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science graduate student Lilli Boss showed that new fuel regulations that cut sulfur by about 80 percent also lowered cloud droplet formation by about 67 percent compared with earlier, dirtier fuels.
“The unexpected rerouting of global shipping gave us a unique opportunity to quantify aerosol-cloud interactions, reducing the largest source of uncertainty in global climate projections,” said Diamond. “When your ‘laboratory’ is the atmosphere, it’s not every day you can run experiments like this one. It was an invaluable opportunity to get a more accurate picture of what’s happening on Earth.”
The findings could help refine global climate models, offering policymakers and scientists more accurate climate predictions and insight into how environmental policy can protect human health...
[...] With roughly twice as many ships in operation during 2024, the overall impact on cloud droplet formation was only slightly weaker than before IMO 2020. However, by comparing NO2, which was unaffected by the sulfur-reducing regulations, with cloud droplet number, which is sensitive to sulfur, Diamond and Boss found a 67% reduction in ships’ cloud-altering abilities after the IMO regulations went into effect.
Their result provides further strong evidence that cleaner fuels have reduced shipping’s influence on cloud formation and helps to quantify the relationship between pollution and cloud response, which is an important constraint for improving climate simulations... (MORE - missing details, no ads)
https://theconversation.com/the-world-lo...ity-270392
INTRO: Ten years ago the world’s leaders placed a historic bet. The 2015 Paris agreement aimed to put humanity on a path to avert dangerous climate change. A decade on, with the latest climate conference ending in Belém, Brazil, without decisive action, we can definitively say humanity has lost this bet.
Warming is going to exceed 1.5°C. We are heading into “overshoot” within the next few years. The world is going to become more turbulent and more dangerous. So, what comes after failure?
Our attempt to answer that question gathered the Earth League – an international network of scientists we work with – for a meeting in Hamburg earlier this year. After months of intensive deliberation, its findings were published this week, with the conclusion that humanity is “living beyond limits”.
Exceed 1.5°C and not only do extreme climate events, like droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves grow in number and severity, impacting billions of people, we also approach tipping points for large Earth regulating systems like the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Tropical coral reef systems, livelihood for over 200 million people, are unlikely to cope with overshoot.
This translates to existential risks for billions of people. Not far in the future, but within the next few years for extreme events, and within decades for tipping points.
The missed opportunities between 1997 and 2015 are the failures of the Kyoto protocol to bend the global emissions curve. There then followed a missed decade since the Paris agreement.
The beauty of Paris – getting all countries to commit collectively to cut emissions – has been undermined by the voluntary mechanisms to achieve it. So while staying well below 2°C is legally binding, the actions within national plans are not.
We are now at a critical juncture... (MORE - details)
When trade routes shift, so do clouds: researchers uncover ripple effects of new global shipping regulations
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1107134
EXCERPTS: When militia attacks disrupted shipping lanes in the Red Sea, few imagined the ripple effects would reach the clouds over the South Atlantic. But for Florida State University atmospheric scientist Michael Diamond, the rerouting of cargo ships offered a rare opportunity to clarify a pressing climate question — How much do cleaner fuels change how clouds form?
In research published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Diamond and FSU Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science graduate student Lilli Boss showed that new fuel regulations that cut sulfur by about 80 percent also lowered cloud droplet formation by about 67 percent compared with earlier, dirtier fuels.
“The unexpected rerouting of global shipping gave us a unique opportunity to quantify aerosol-cloud interactions, reducing the largest source of uncertainty in global climate projections,” said Diamond. “When your ‘laboratory’ is the atmosphere, it’s not every day you can run experiments like this one. It was an invaluable opportunity to get a more accurate picture of what’s happening on Earth.”
The findings could help refine global climate models, offering policymakers and scientists more accurate climate predictions and insight into how environmental policy can protect human health...
[...] With roughly twice as many ships in operation during 2024, the overall impact on cloud droplet formation was only slightly weaker than before IMO 2020. However, by comparing NO2, which was unaffected by the sulfur-reducing regulations, with cloud droplet number, which is sensitive to sulfur, Diamond and Boss found a 67% reduction in ships’ cloud-altering abilities after the IMO regulations went into effect.
Their result provides further strong evidence that cleaner fuels have reduced shipping’s influence on cloud formation and helps to quantify the relationship between pollution and cloud response, which is an important constraint for improving climate simulations... (MORE - missing details, no ads)