net zero

Kemi Badenoch’s Climate Denial Tour

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Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Vice president elect JD Vance and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. Credit: JD Vance / X

The Conservative leader, who attacked “radical green absolutism” in a Washington DC speech, recently met with a host of influential anti-climate figures.

Speaking to an audience in Washington DC last week, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch declared that the conservative desire to “protect the natural world” had been “hacked, replaced by a radical green absolutism”. 

“Looking after our planet became an exclusive discussion about net zero and reducing emissions, and alongside it the growth of activist government to regulate it,” she said. 

Badenoch was giving the keynote speech at the centre-right International Democracy Union (IDU) Forum on 5 December. According to her team, she was in the U.S. to build ties with the Republican Party following the election of Donald Trump as the next president.

In keeping with her speech, the new friends that Badenoch spent time with during the trip – vice president elect JD Vance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre – have spread climate science denial and received funding from the fossil fuel industry. 

Badenoch describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has suggested that the UK’s 2050 target for achieving net zero emissions would “bankrupt the country”. As DeSmog has reported, her political advisors have attacked the UK’s climate goals, and her campaign for Tory leader was backed by Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, an arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation climate denial group. 

Her ministers Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick have ties to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. think tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term, which proposes the rollback of climate policies and environmental protections. 

Here’s what you need to know about Badenoch’s new anti-green allies.

JD Vance

Badenoch reportedly had an hour-long dinner with vice president elect JD Vance, during which they “renewed their friendship”.

Vance has a history of dismissing human-caused climate change. In 2021, he told the American Leadership Forum, a U.S. Christian group: “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man”. He added: “It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia.”

During this year’s U.S. presidential election, Vance repeatedly attacked the Biden administration’s climate policies as “the Green new scam”. 

Former venture capitalist Vance received a total of $352,000 (around £276,000) from the fossil fuel industry between 2019 and 2024, according to campaign finance database OpenSecrets. 

Ron DeSantis

The Tory leader also met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who ran to be the Republican nominee for president this year.

DeSantis, who endorsed Badenoch to be Conservative leader, has described climate change as a “religion” and has passed laws to curb action to tackle it. 

In October, when asked about the role of climate change in two hurricanes off the Florida Gulf Coast, DeSantis said: “I don’t subscribe to your religion.” 

Hurricanes are fuelled by warmer waters, meaning that more devastating hurricanes are directly linked to rising temperatures. Consequently, as the Florida Climate Center has pointed out: “A larger proportion of storms have reached major hurricane strength in recent years, along with an increase in rapid intensification events.”

DeSantis went on to defend the continued extraction of fossil fuels, saying climate action would involve: “Taxing [people] to smithereens, stopping oil and gas, making people pay dramatically more for energy; we would collapse as a country.”

Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill into law that would delete references to climate change from all state legislation. In May he posted on X in support of the bill: “Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid [and] pursue a radical climate agenda”.

Mike Johnson

Badenoch also reportedly met with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives. 

In 2017, Johnson told a public meeting with constituents: “I am not a big proponent of the climate change data because I have seen data on the other side.” 

He added: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is climate changing because of natural cycles in the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”

In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

Johnson has repeatedly voted against action to tackle rising temperatures, including laws that would require oil and gas companies to disclose the climate risks of their activities, while supporting cuts to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

He has also received around $240,000 (more than £118,000) in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, according to OpenSecrets. 

Pierre Poilievre

Badenoch’s North American trip also saw her visit Toronto, where she met with Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Canadian Conservative Party. 

Declaring that conservative leaders in Canada and the UK were “uniting over shared values”, Badenoch posted on X calling Poilievre “an impressive and thoughtful figure” and “a new friend and ally”. 

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As DeSmog reported in March, Poilievre has voted against climate and environmental legislation nearly 400 times during his parliamentary career. 

Poilievre has also campaigned against a carbon tax in Canada, and has supported Canadian oil and gas extraction, calling it “the most ethical and environmentally sound in the world”.

The Free Press

Badenoch also recorded a podcast with The Free Press, a conservative platform which has published attacks on climate science and action. 

In 2022, it ran an article by climate crisis denier Michael Shellenberger arguing that the West’s “green delusions”, and its attempts to transition away from fossil fuels, had “empowered” Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. 

In September 2023, the platform published an article by U.S. scientist Patrick Brown, who heads a climate unit at Shellenberger’s Breakthrough Institute, claiming he had been pressured by Nature magazine to make a paper on wildfires fit a climate change “narrative” – claims rejected by the magazine and other scientists. 

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Continue ReadingKemi Badenoch’s Climate Denial Tour

Climate Science Deniers Use Farmers’ Protests to Attack Net Zero

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

Jeremy Clarkson spreads well-worn conspiracy theory that casts inheritance farm tax policy as plot to “replace farmers with migrants”.

A network of conspiracy theorists has jumped on the inheritance tax debate to fuel an anti-green “culture war”, experts say.

Thousands of farmers demonstrated in Westminster on Tuesday against the Labour government’s plans to remove an inheritance tax exemption on agricultural assets, with tractors blocking roads outside parliament. 

The policy, which raises inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million to 20 percent from April 2026, has been criticised by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats, The Green Party and others, with disputes about how many farms will be affected. 

But social media analysis by DeSmog shows how the protests have also been exploited by a number of high-profile individuals and groups, spreading conspiracy theories about a left-wing government plot to take away people’s freedoms under the guise of climate action. 

These include TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who has repeatedly cast doubt on the role of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions on climate change. The campaign group ‘No Farmers, No Food’, which has spread false claims about governments forcing people to “eat bugs”; the Together Declaration, which has cast doubt on the safety of life-saving Covid-19 vaccines; and Reform UK, the anti-immigration party which campaigns to “scrap net zero” and open new coal mines, were all active at the protest.

The protests have also attracted the attention of international commentators, among them Donald Trump ally Elon Musk, who shared a Guardian column defending the policy, adding: “Britain is going full Stalin.” Musk is increasingly commenting on UK politics, posting during the summer’s far-right riots: “Civil war is inevitable.” 

DeSmog has contacted Clarkson, NFNF and Together for comment.

Conspiracy Theories

Jeremy Clarkson, who presents the “Clarkson’s Farm” documentary series, was a celebrity speaker at the protests, calling for Labour to “back down” on the policy and receiving widespread media attention. In a column for The Sun newspaper on 8 November, Clarkson described Labour’s centre-left chancellor Rachel Reeves as “an admirer of communists”. 

He wrote: “I’m becoming more and more convinced that Starmer and Reeves have a sinister plan. They want to carpet bomb our farmland with new towns for immigrants and net zero windfarms. But before they can do that, they have to ethnically cleanse the countryside of farmers.”

The comments echo alarmist claims made in the Netherlands since 2019 that the government is using green policies to take land from farmers in order to house asylum seekers. Far-right parties have won major election victories in the country in part thanks to the public anger expressed in farmers’ protests.   

Clarkson has commented on farmers’ protests in the Netherlands and Germany. In January he wrote a piece for The Times titled: “Apparently it’s far-right to grow food.” DeSmog has reported on how farmers’ protests on a range of issues have been “hijacked” and blamed on green policies. 

Clarkson’s claims also echo the “Great Reset”, a post-Covid conspiracy theory which claims that the World Economic Forum (WEF) and other international “elites” are using green policies to impose a socialist dictatorship on the world.  

These claims have also been promoted by ‘No Farmers, No Food’ (NFNF), a campaign group which had a significant presence at Tuesday’s protests.

As DeSmog reported in February, the group is run by PR executive and GB News pundit James Melville and backed by the Together Declaration, a climate denial and conspiracy theory group set up in 2021 to oppose Covid-19 lockdowns. 

In January, NFNF shared a post on X which said: “Farmers stand between us and WEF’s desire for us to ‘EAT BUGS, own nothing and be happy’.” The same month, Melville shared a post which read: “Farmers across Europe are mass protesting the globalists trying to crush them. Between Bill Gates, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] & the WEF, we’re going to have no private farmland left. They want you eating bugs.”

Earlier this week Melville posted that “farmers are the lightning rod in so many key battles that determine our way of life”, including “the net zero debate”. He added: “It’s probably the most important fight for the very fabric of British society right now.”

Clarkson has also written columns in The Sun this month attacking Labour’s energy policies and mocking prime minister Keir Starmer’s attendance at COP29, the UN climate summit taking place in Azerbaijan, as “virtue signalling” and “a complete waste of time”.  

In 2021, Clarkson told the Sunday Times that he bought his £4.25 million farm, Diddly Squat, in order to avoid paying inheritance tax. When asked about this by the BBC at the protest on Tuesday, he said the question was “classic BBC”, and that the real reason was that he wanted to “shoot pheasants”. 

Anti-Net Zero Agenda

Attending the protests was Alan D Miller, a businessman who founded the Together Declaration in August 2021. At Tuesday’s protest he was photographed alongside Clarkson, who was holding a placard which read: “With Our Farmers #Together”. 

Miller posted a video of himself on GB News on X with the caption: “the obsession with net zero has far too much virtue signalling & far too little open honest transparent debate.”

As DeSmog reported in May, research by the cross-party think tank Demos found that Together was responsible for all online posts attacking low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in 2023. In the same year, the group published an open letter which said, “We have no confidence in the process for ensuring ongoing safety of the Covid-19 vaccines”.

In 2023, Together also launched its “No to Net Zero” campaign which attacked the premise and implementation of net zero, saying that the targets are based on “wildly exaggerated fears about the future” and that “modern industry and farming are not what is killing us, it is what is keeping us alive.”

The farmers’ protest was supported by Ben Pile, Together’s “cabinet member for net zero”, who posted on X that farmers should “please remember that no part of the UK’s green agenda is your friend. All of it is intended to deprive you of your livelihood, one way or another. That is its design.”

Pile is a climate crisis denial blogger who has falsely claimed that “the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is neither as strong nor as demanding of action as is widely claimed”.

This wing of the farmers’ protest was also supported by Reform UK, the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage MP. In a post on X, the party’s official account, used the NFNF slogan: “All the Reform MPs are at today’s farmers protest in Westminster. We are sending a message. No farmers, no food.”

A YouGov poll published this week found that just one in three Reform voters believe in man-made climate change.

Farage was also interviewed by Miller at the demonstration. In a video posted on X by Together, Farage called for similar farmers’ protests “in every market town in the country” and warned that these policies could cost Labour 100 seats in parliament. 

Culture War

Labour has staunchly defended the inheritance tax plans, which it says will affect only 500 of the UK’s 209,000 farms.

Environment secretary Steve Reed said it was “only right” to ask the “wealthiest landowners and the biggest farms to pay their fair share”, citing the “£22 billion fiscal hole” inherited from the Conservative government.

However, Tom Lancaster, a land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), argues that the policy is likely to do more harm than good. 

“The risk of this tax reform is that it distracts from the government’s climate and nature objectives, angering the very farmers we need to deliver these goals,” he told DeSmog. 

“It’s hard to argue that the long-term costs of damaging their relationship with farmers to such an extent is worth the relatively small amount of money that it will raise, and it is also clear that in rushing the reform, they have missed an opportunity to use APR [Agricultural Property Relief] to further wider aims on the environment and tenancy reform.”

He added that the policy had been helpful for political opportunists. “The way these reforms have been handled – sprung on farmers after all the signals were to leave the reliefs alone – is also a gift to those who would seek to ferment a culture war in farming,” he said.

“There is nothing so appealing to a culture warrior as a betrayal narrative, and this gives them that on a plate.”

Additional reporting by Clare Carlile

Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingClimate Science Deniers Use Farmers’ Protests to Attack Net Zero

Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s Views on Climate Change

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Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. Credit: Credit: HM Treasury (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The new leader of the opposition has regularly criticised the UK’s green ambitions.

The Conservative Party has elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader, who describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has received funding from the head of a climate science denial campaign.

Badenoch was announced as the winner of the Tory leadership contest on Saturday, beating her rival Robert Jenrick by 56 percent to 44 percent.  

The former business and trade secretary campaigned for leader as a straight-talking conservative who would tackle the “woke” left. 

But as DeSmog has reported, Badenoch has also repeatedly suggested that the UK’s net zero targets would “bankrupt the country”, has boasted of standing up to “the green lobby” while in government, and has called Labour’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences “foolish”. 

Badenoch has also received money and office space from Neil Record, the chair of the climate denial group Net Zero Watch (NZW), and produced a leadership manifesto which attacked the “radical environmental policies” previously introduced by the Conservative Party.

Net Zero Sceptic

Making her pitch to Conservative MPs at the party’s annual conference on 2 October, Badenoch described herself as a “net zero sceptic” but “not a climate change sceptic”. 

Badenoch said in 2022 that the UK’s 2050 legally-binding target for achieving net zero emissions was “arbitrary” and last year suggested she would support delaying it. 

In her Conservative conference speech, Badenoch said that net zero is “making energy more expensive and hurting our economy”, a claim which the International Energy Agency, a leading authority on energy policy, says is false. 

Badenoch did not confirm in her speech that she would delay or scrap the UK’s net zero targets but said, “I did not become an MP to deliver an agenda set by Ed Miliband”, who currently serves as the secretary of state for energy security and net zero.

She has repeatedly said that she wants to reduce emissions but not in a way that would “bankrupt” the country.

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than one percent of UK GDP. 

The government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – has said that, “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.

Badenoch claimed during the Tory leadership campaign that, while serving as business secretary, she “had to work hard to push back against the green lobby”, and condemned Labour’s “foolish decision to ban new licences for North Sea oil production” as part of its “fanatical approach to net zero”.

As DeSmog revealed, during the leadership contest Badenoch published a 40-page manifesto which cited the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a U.S. group led by former advisors to Donald Trump, which has likened climate science to believing the earth is flat. 

Badenoch used evidence produced by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity to claim that net zero policies are only supported by high-earning graduates living in cities.

Badenoch’s document, titled ‘Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class’, attacked what it called “radical environmental politics” – such as the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars introduced by the previous Tory government – and praised fracking, the controversial method adopted in the U.S. to extract more oil and gas. 

Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, have said that without “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors” limiting global heating to 1.5C is beyond reach.

Restricting global temperatures to this target, which was agreed as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, would prevent the worst and most irreversible impacts of climate change.

Climate Denial Ally

In August, DeSmog revealed that Badenoch had received £10,000 towards her leadership campaign from Neil Record, a millionaire Tory donor and chair of Net Zero Watch (NZW), the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial group. 

Bloomberg further revealed that Badenoch was running her leadership campaign out of Record’s London home.  

NZW has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

Record – who is also lifetime president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018 – in July wrote that achieving net zero by 2050 “will restrict our freedom, and is likely to be eye-wateringly expensive”. Record has donated to both the IEA and GWPF.

The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. The group has been accused of spreading “daft conspiracy yarns” about net zero.

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Continue ReadingTory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s Views on Climate Change

Alberta Conservatives Pass Climate Denial Resolution 12 to Celebrate CO2 Pollution

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Original article by Danielle Paradis and Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog

UCP members voted in favor of a resolution to “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.” Credit: Danielle Paradis

Alberta’s United Conservative Party has passed a resolution to rebrand carbon dioxide — the chief gas whose overabundance in Earth’s atmosphere is causing the climate emergency — in a brazen display of climate science denial that harkens back to the 1990s fossil fuel industry playbook.

Resolution 12, which falls under the “environmental stewardship and emissions reduction” area of the policy discussion, will “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.” 

In approving the resolution, the UCP resolved to abandon the province’s net zero targets, remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant, and further “recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”

“We must prioritize policies that protect our economy and our way of life. CO2 is an essential nutrient for mass, driving growth and boosting plant production. According to the CO2 Coalition, higher CO2 levels have led to healthier crops and improved food security worldwide,” said a UCP member speaking in favour of the policy who cited the notorious CO2 Coalition. 

The resolution passed by a wide majority. 

UCP members vote in favor of Resolution 12. Credit: Danielle Paradis

A member who spoke against the bill, saying that just like like someone can drink too much water and experience water poisoning, too much CO2 can be bad. He was booed by the crowd. 

The policy discussion took place in Red Deer, Alberta, where 6,085 UCP members and observers debated 33 policy resolutions at their annual general meeting. Earlier in the day, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pledged to “triple down” on conservative priorities, including further expanding oil production and attacking Canadian climate policies.

As several outlets have reported previously, Resolution 12 flies in the face of the scientific consensus on climate change, and the party’s rationale for the resolution states a widely debunked claim that “the Earth needs more CO2 to support life and to increase plant yields.”

Carbon dioxide is the gas principally responsible for exacerbating the greenhouse effect, the consequence of which is global warming. Whereas carbon is a foundational building block of life on Earth, carbon dioxide is an asphyxiating gas whose atmospheric proportions are so high they’re disrupting the normal function of the carbon cycle. 

The resolution was submitted by the members of the legislative assembly (MLA) representing the provincial ridings of Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock (Glenn van Dijken), and Red Deer-South (Jason Stephan). 

The argument that carbon dioxide is a “gas of life” has been a common yet easily refutable talking point popularized by climate change deniers and other right-wing extremists. One such group, the anti-wind energy group Wind Concerns, referred to carbon dioxide as a “gas of life” in an interview with DeSmog last year. Their leader, Mark Mallett, took credit for contributing to the anti-renewable energy moratorium instituted by Alberta UCP Premier Danielle Smith.

Climate scientists have long confirmed that increased CO2 in the atmosphere does not, as climate change deniers insist, create better growing conditions for plants.

The argument that carbon dioxide is beneficial for the environment appears to have first been made by the Greening Earth Society (GES) in the mid-late 1990s. GES was a creation of the Western Fuels Association, and it was later determined the two groups were one and the same. GES published the World Climate Report, a non-academic and non-peer-reviewed journal that served as a platform for climate change denial. They were transparent in acknowledging their funding from fossil fuel companies, and appear to have originated several talking points now common amongst climate change deniers, including those that advocate for increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, which would result in faster plant growth and greater agricultural yields.

In the “rationale” section of the resolution, the United Conservative Party document argues that “CO2 is a nutrient foundational to all life on Earth.”

While plants need both light and carbon dioxide to thrive, the over-supply of CO2 in recent decades is leading to plants being deprived of their nutrients. One biologist was quoted in a 2017 Politico article describing this as akin to “the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history,” and that injection is diluting the nutrients in the food supply.

While the resolution notes that the “carbon cycle is a biological necessity,” it doesn’t appear the resolution’s sponsors are aware that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere throws the carbon cycle off balance. This is precisely what’s causing the climate emergency: too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combined with the destruction of natural carbon storage is destroying the carbon cycle as we know it. The proposed resolution is as contradictory as it is scientifically illiterate.

The resolution also states that current CO2 levels are around 420 PPM, which is described as being “near the lowest level in over 1000 years.” Where this idea comes from is not clear, but it is not supported by verifiable scientific evidence. To the contrary, CO2 levels were 34 percent lower than today in the year 1024, at about 280 PPM. CO2 levels have climbed steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, though they have grown most aggressively since 1950. NASA estimates that, despite wide fluctuations over time, CO2 levels had not exceeded 300 PPM over the last 800,000 years, but have stayed above that level since 1950.

The argument that more CO2 will support life, increase yields, and “contribute to the health and prosperity of all Albertans” — as stated in the resolution — is not supported by scientific evidence. The opposite is a far likelier outcome. As the principal driver of the climate crisis and global warming, increasing CO2 levels will exacerbate droughts, wildfires, and floods, among other disasters, in turn resulting in loss of life and major disruptions to global supply chains. The consequent economic disturbances and their aftereffects will worsen the affordability crisis and result in increasingly negative economic outcomes for all, not just Albertans. Rather than stimulate Alberta’s agricultural sector, climate change will destroy it, and the evidence this is already happening is quite clear.

Another policy resolution is focused on the provincial government’s “scrap the cap” program. The policy builds on a previous resolution to repeal the carbon tax and instead: “Prohibit any consumer carbon tax or carbon pricing scheme or carbon cap and trade system from being implemented in Alberta.” 

The resolution also proposes to support “any federal or interprovincial government’s efforts to “axe the tax” (the federal conservative campaign) by eliminating the federal carbon pricing backstop from being imposed on Albertans and Canadians.” 

Other resolutions over the weekend have focused on print-based identification, and a requirement for in-person voting “to deal with all the voter fraud.”

Original article by Danielle Paradis and Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog

Continue ReadingAlberta Conservatives Pass Climate Denial Resolution 12 to Celebrate CO2 Pollution

Study Warns of ‘Irreversible Impacts’ From Overshooting 1.5°C, Even Temporarily

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Houses destroyed by the rising sea level are shown at the Port-Bouet beach in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on September 2, 2024. (Photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images)

“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages.”

Just over a month away from the next United Nations climate summit, a study out Wednesday warns that heating the planet beyond a key temperature threshold of the Paris agreement—even temporarily—could cause “irreversible impacts.”

The 2015 agreement aims to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, relative to preindustrial levels.

“For years, scientists and world leaders have pinned their hopes for the future on a hazy promise—that, even if temperatures soar far above global targets, the planet can eventually be cooled back down,” The Washington Postdetailed Wednesday. “This phenomenon, known as a temperature ‘overshoot,’ has been baked into most climate models and plans for the future.”

“The earlier we can get to net-zero, the lower peak warming will be, and the smaller the risks of irreversible impacts.”

As lead author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner said in a statement, “This paper does away with any notion that overshoot would deliver a similar climate outcome to a future in which we had done more, earlier, to ensure to limit peak warming to 1.5°C.”

“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages,” stressed Schleussner, an expert from Climate Analytics and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis who partnered with 29 other scientists for the study.

The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, states that “for a range of climate impacts, there is no expectation of immediate reversibility after an overshoot. This includes changes in the deep ocean, marine biogeochemistry and species abundance, land-based biomes, carbon stocks, and crop yields, but also biodiversity on land. An overshoot will also increase the probability of triggering potential Earth system tipping elements.”

“Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to millennia even if long-term temperatures decline,” the study adds, projecting that every 100 years of overshoot could lead seas to rise nearly 16 inches by 2300, on top of more than 31 inches without overshoot.

The scientists found that “a similar pattern emerges” for the thawing of permafrost—ground that is frozen for two or more years—and northern peatland warming, which would lead to the release of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane. They wrote that “the effect of permafrost and peatland emissions on 2300 temperatures increases by 0.02ºC per 100 years of overshoot.”

“To hedge and protect against high-risk outcomes, we identify the geophysical need for a preventive carbon dioxide removal capacity of several hundred gigatonnes,” the authors noted. “Yet, technical, economic, and sustainability considerations may limit the realization of carbon dioxide removal deployment at such scales. Therefore, we cannot be confident that temperature decline after overshoot is achievable within the timescales expected today. Only rapid near-term emission reductions are effective in reducing climate risks.”

In other words, as co-author and Climate Analytics research analyst Gaurav Ganti, put it, “there’s no way to rule out the need for large amounts of net negative emissions capabilities, so we really need to minimize our residual emissions.”

“We cannot squander carbon dioxide removal on offsetting emissions we have the ability to avoid,” Ganti added. “Our work reinforces the urgency of governments acting to reduce our emissions now, and not later down the line. The race to net-zero needs to be seen for what it is—a sprint.”

While the paper comes ahead of COP29, the U.N. conference in Azerbaijan next month, co-author Joeri Rogelj looked toward COP30, for which governments that have signed the Paris agreement will present their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to meet the climate deal’s goals.

“Until we get to net-zero, warming will continue. The earlier we can get to net-zero, the lower peak warming will be, and the smaller the risks of irreversible impacts,” said Rogelj, a professor and director of research for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “This underscores the importance of countries submitting ambitious new reduction pledges, or so-called ‘NDCs,’ well ahead of next year’s climate summit in Brazil.”

The U.N. said last November that countries’ current emissions plans would put the world on track for 2.9°C of warming by 2100, nearly double the Paris target. Since then, scientists have confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year in human history and warned that 2024 is expected to set a new record.

The study in Nature was published as Hurricane Milton—fueled by hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico—barreled toward Florida and just a day after another group of scientists wrote in BioScience that “we are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.”

Those experts emphasized that “human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10%.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
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