The April 2022 climate report by the IPCC gave a no-later-than date of 2030 to limit global warming to avert disaster. Still, scientists say the results of that study are widely misinterpreted; the actual deadline is before 2025.
UN climate report dire warning for all life on earth
On April 4, 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), backed by the United Nations, released and finalized the second part of the Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.
The grim results were called a “dire warning about the consequences of inaction” on climate change.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said: “We are on a fast track to climate disaster.”
In a video speech, Guterres warned that climate change caused by human activities is threatening the large-scale extinction of billions of animals and plant species.
“With climate change, some parts of the planet will become uninhabitable,” said German scientist Hans-Otto Pörtner, who is the co-chair of Working Group II, USA Today reported.
In a similar report issued by the IPCC in 2021, the results were just as grim, identifying 2030 as the tipping point. At the time, Guterres called the findings “a code red for humanity.”
But as bad as these experts thought it was this week, scientists came forward to say those findings were widely misinterpreted, and the real implications are much worse.
2025: Less than 3 years left to stop climate apocalypse
In a new document, researchers wrote that greenhouse gases are projected to peak “at the latest before 2025.” These implications mean that there are only three years left to avoid dangerous global warming, the BBC reported in mid-April.
“Global greenhouse gases are projected to peak between 2020 and at the latest by 2025, in global modeled pathways that limit warming to 1.5C,” the summary by the scientists states.
Most media outlets understood this statement to mean emissions could rise until 2025 when they would reach a peak at which they must be forced to increase no further.
But observers argue this is a misinterpretation. They say if emissions continue to grow until 2025, it will be a disaster for the world.
“We definitely don’t have the luxury of letting emissions grow for yet another three years,” said Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace. “If people now start chasing emissions peak by 2025 as some kind of benchmark, we don’t have a chance.”
“We have eight years to nearly halve global emissions,” Kosonen added. “That’s an enormous task, but still doable, as the IPCC has just reminded us.”
A preliminary report released in February warned that climate change was happening faster than previously thought, becoming more widespread and disrupted than researchers had expected 20 years ago, CNN reported.
The previous assessment that set a target date of 2020 had already surmised that a Herculean effort would be required to shrink carbon emissions by 43% by the end of this decade in order to keep the rise in global temperatures under 1.5C this century.
About the IPCC
The United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide scientific assessments on climate change and its implications and risks.
The IPCC releases its assessments every six to seven years for the purpose of providing governments worldwide with information to assist in developing climate policies.
The 2022 report released by the IPCC’s Working Group II was prepared by 270 top scientists from 67 countries and built on a report released last summer by the IPCC’s Working Group I. The previous report made headlines for its dire warning of a “code red for humanity.”
