In 2013, researchers last summarized the scientific status of climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since then, a lot has become even clearer: including the role of people.
Geneva / Berlin – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wants to present new scientific findings on man-made global warming. The report aims to show more clearly than ever how exactly greenhouse gas emissions affect the rise in temperature.
234 experts from 66 countries have viewed and assessed all the findings on climate change from studies that have appeared since the last report in 2013.
Among other things, they show the danger of more extreme events, such as the recent heat waves in Greece and Turkey or the floods in Germany. The researchers also comment on the melting of glaciers and polar ice and the rise in sea levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a summary of the findings for political decision-makers, which has been approved by the 195 member countries. It is a basis for the planned World Climate Conference in Glasgow in early November.
“We expect that the new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will dispel the very last doubts that humans have been the main cause of climate change since the beginning of industrialization,” said Research Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) of the German Press Agency. The people would have to “oppose even more resolutely” to climate change. It does not rule out that flights within Germany are terminated in favor of an expansion of public passenger transport or the CO2 price for emissions is increased. That would make petrol and diesel more expensive, among other things.
It is already clear that the number and intensity of extreme events increase with increasing warming, said Astrid Kiendler-Scharr, head of the Institute for Energy and Climate Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich, the dpa. The number of hot days in Germany has risen by almost 200 percent since 1951, as has the number of days with heavy rain. “With every tenth of a degree of warming, the risk of extremes increases and the frequency and intensity of extremes increases,” she said.
Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) also told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” (Monday) with a view to the IPCC report and extreme weather events: “They are no longer going away, because we cannot turn back the climate change that has already occurred. But we can slow down the global warming. “
Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) called for more support from the EU for poorer countries in terms of climate protection. Only 8 out of 191 states currently achieved the goals of the Paris climate agreement, he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “We need a global green deal: with huge private investments to expand renewable energies as well as technology transfers and an investment offensive by industrialized countries in emerging and developing countries.”
The report will clarify the urgency of climate protection measures, said the meteorologist Peter Knippertz from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the dpa. “Every climate-damaging molecule that we emit is one too many, regardless of whether it comes as methane from a sheep’s bottom in New Zealand, or as carbon dioxide from an exhaust pipe in the USA or a power station west of Cologne.” serious. “We have to stop lying in our pockets,” he said. “We should start together in the project sustainable and liveable future.” Dpa
