A month after the unprecedented massive People's Climate March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is meeting this week in Copenhagen preparing for the November 2 release of its AR5 Synthesis Report, which is being called "the most comprehensive, authoritative and scrutinized assessment of climate science ever produced."
Leaked copies of the Synthesis reveal the IPCC predicts "severe, pervasive and irreversible" climate impacts if immediate aggressive and immediate action is not taken to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
"May I humbly suggest that policymakers avoid being overcome by the seeming hopelessness of addressing climate change," said Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman. "Tremendous strides are being made in alternative sources of clean energy. There is much we can do to use energy more efficiently. Reducing and ultimately eliminating deforestation provides additional avenues for action."
The report, based on work of 2000 scientists & 5000 pages of evidence, synthesizes the release of three previous reports produced by Workings Goups 1-3 and presents some potential solutions, while stressing the need for immediate local, regional and global action.
Civil Society and NGOs are collaborating on a campaign to utilize the IPCC release next Tuesday to enhance public awareness and amplify pressure on government leaders to acknowledge the end of the fossil fuel era and the birth of a new global system fueled by renewable energy.
According to the IPCC, using scenarios which roughly equate to continuing business-as-usual, global temperature rise will reach a range of 4 degrees C above pre-industrial times, which would be catastrophic for people and planet.
The governments of the world have previously agreed on the need to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial times, with many of the most vulnerable nations on Earth calling for a cap at 1.5 degrees C. The AR5 report doesn't rule out the possibility to achieve this, but paints a picture of massive changes in how we power our economies in order to get there.
To this end, the IPCC has - for the first time - outlined a carbon budget. This budget states that for a two-thirds chance of keeping warming below the 2 degrees C threshold, the world will need to cap total emissions, since 1870, at 2900 gigatons. However, as of 2011, two-thirds of this budget had already been spent. Therefore, in order to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees C by the year 2100, significant emissions reductions efforts will be required over the coming two decades (and accordingly, even more significant and even faster measures to stay below 1.5 degrees C)
Background
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) engages scientists from univerities, businesses,think tanks and nonprofits to assess and report on the latest findings in climate science. The IPCC is now concluding its fifth assessment report, and to date, no information has been released with relation to a follow up report.
AR5, the latest IPPC assessment report, has been released in four installments beginning in the fall of 2013. Three working groups have detailed the pysical science of climate change and its impacts; highlighted vulnerabilties and reported on mitigation and adaption options.
The latest report provides the most conclusive evidence to date that climate change is most directly related to human activity and that its impacts are already being experienced across the globe. Some of these unprecedented changes might be irreversible.
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