The forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, is the last hope for the world to keep the worst consequences of global warming at bay. But many scientists have expressed their doubts the chances that an agreement will be reached to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels are significantly less.
The developed nations in the world has not taken sufficient actions in limit greenhouse gas emissions and funding developing nations to reduce emission. Temperature is forecast to smash through that threshold because of this. Humans are changing the climate, and those changes are going to be worst. To control the emission is the need of the hour because humans are running out of time to prevent the worst-case scenarios.
The rise in global temperature has already begun to wreak havoc with the water cycle. As humans are looking forward to COP26 as an opportunity to make some real progress, but experts are worried that COP26 will turn out to be like COP25 and COP24 and COP23 beforehand. This conference will not produce the kinds of changes that we know are necessary.
The previous U.N. climate change conferences have inspired good intentions. But not enough actions are being taken by developed countries that produce most greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. There is a little mystery about what is responsible for climate change in the scientific community. The suspense heading into Glasgow is whether world leaders will plan how to act on what.
A lead author of one of the IPCC reports, Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh is not encouraged by the actions taken since COP21 in 2015 when many nations signed on to the Paris Agreement. This year lots of deadly extreme weather events in the U.S. indicated that the threat from climate change is real. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said climate-related disasters in 2021 have already killed 538 people and caused over $100 billion in the U.S. 50% of Americans now view climate change as an emergency.
The CEO of Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes climate science, has long warned what rising temperatures will mean for life on Earth. In 2012 the organization testified before Congress on the number of homes in the U.S. that would be put at risk due to rising seas. The current president of the U.S. and the administration want to be ambitious and encourage other countries of the world to be also ambitious. The failure to enact a plan that will help restore the U.S. climate leadership on the world stage comes as a reminder that any promises of future emission cuts will require action in Congress.
Many scientists are still of the view that human beings can still significantly slow climate change. Humans are still where they were five or ten years ago. There are a lot of pledges and commitments that even then aren’t enough to solve the problem. Most of the countries are not on track to meet the promises they have made earlier.