Scientists expect temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C

Hundreds of experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believe that global heating will blast past internationally agreed targets, with disastrous consequences for humanity and the planet.

According to a recent report, hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect our planet to breach the internationally agreed 1.5C threshold by 2027 and temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels this century.

This is due to emissions from human activities and the changing weather patterns we’re continuing to witness with each record-breaking summer.

Conducted by the Guardian earlier this month, the poll surveyed every contactable lead author or review editor (some 843 individuals) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who’ve been collating and assessing all available scientific information about the climate crisis since 2018.

The United Nations body has so far published six studies of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation, acting as a crucial facilitator of climate change research and governance on both the national and international stages.

Of the 380 experts interviewed, 80 per cent foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, almost half anticipate at least 3C, and just 6 per cent thought the 1.5C limit would ever be met in the first place.

If their estimations play out, the consequences for humanity and the planet would be catastrophic.

Numerous participants envisage a ‘semi-dystopian’ future, with ‘famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.’

And many feel ‘hopeless, infuriated, and scared’ by the failure of governments to act in spite of clear evidence outlining what will happen if they don’t.

‘If the world, unbelievably wealthy as it is, stands by and does little to address the plight of the poor, we will all lose eventually,’ Dipak Dasgupta from the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi told the Guardian, citing the failure of the wealthy to tackle their disproportionate impact or to support those most vulnerable to environmental breakdown as a key issue to be addressed.

Almost all the experts agreed upon why the crisis will keep getting worse, and 75 per cent said it has to do with a ‘lack of political will’ to transition away from high-impact fuels, practices, and foods.