Last Monday, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change began its meeting in Bonn, Germany, mainly to review progress made since the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change to which 197 countries are signatories. Some 25,000 officials from various countries, including scientists and lobbyists, are in attendance. As part of its efforts to have a ‘green’ conference and to assist in offsetting emissions from air travel to the conference, Germany has made available hundreds of bicycles and electric buses to shuttle participants to and from the conference, among other measures. Since 1990, CO2 emissions from air travel have increased by 83%.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program has released Volume I of a special report on climate change. The report confirmed several of the findings contained in other studies, some of which have been highlighted in last week’s article. A key finding is that global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond. The magnitude of climate change will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases emitted globally and on the remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to those emissions. With significant reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, the global annually averaged temperature rise could be limited to 3.6°F (2°C) or less. Without major reductions in these emissions, the increase in annual average global temperatures relative to the pre-industrial period could reach 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of the century.
