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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Two degrees no longer seen as global warming guardrail

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PARIS: Limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius will not prevent destructive and deadly climate impacts, as once hoped, dozens of experts concluded in a score of scientific studies released on Monday.


A world that heats up by 2C — long regarded as the temperature ceiling for a climate-safe planet — could see mass displacement due to rising seas, a drop in per capita income, regional shortages of food and fresh water, and the loss of animal and plant species at an accelerated speed.


Poor and emerging countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will get hit hardest, according to the studies in the British Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A.


“We are detecting large changes in climate impacts for a 2C world, and so should take steps to avoid this,” said lead editor Dann Mitchell.


The 197-nation Paris climate treaty, inked in 2015, vows to halt warming at “well under” 2C compared to mid-19th century levels, and “pursue efforts” to cap the


rise at 1.5C.


With only one degree of warming so far, Earth has seen a crescendo of droughts, heatwaves and storms ramped up by rising seas.


Voluntary national pledges made under the Paris pact to cut CO2 emissions, if fulfilled, would yield a 3C world at best.


Among the conclusions found in the new studies: Researchers led by Felix Pretis, an economist at the University of Oxford, predict that two degrees of global warming will see GDP per person drop, on average, 13 per cent by 2100, once costly climate change impacts are factored in.


That’s bad news for 500 million people living in “highly vulnerable” low-lying deltas, mainly in Asia, along with some 400 million people in coastal cities.


The countries that show “the greatest increase in vulnerability to food insecurity when moving from the present-day climate to 2C global warming are Oman, India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Brazil,” he said. — AFP


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