What would you highlight from this year’s climate summit? Where is the focus going?
It is a summit that, from what I am seeing these days, is characterized by having a frenzied activity ; of many acts, outside the negotiations, and right in the final stretch is where it is assumed that some kind of agreement will be reached.
What I am seeing is that there is too much resistance on the issue of the emissions market. It is what right now is hindering that, perhaps, in the end, there is a satisfactory agreement.
As our planet is, the socioeconomic reality of the different countries or states is very different; so there are countries that still have a wide margin to exploit, for example, coal, fossil fuels. In the countries where this is no longer so necessary or a quick conversion could be made, they are putting pressure on these other large states that still do not see the need to do so despite the fact that we have the environmental problem. And in that negotiation is where the issue is.
Why is the COP25 president talking about a Blue COP , in reference to the oceans?
Until very recently, the main evidence of climate change was manifested in the atmosphere , in the form of global warming and then associated with that rise in temperatures, the melting of ice, and other effects or impacts.
But in the last few years, a very clear signal is beginning to be observed in the oceans. The temperature of the surface part of the oceans is warming, and that is having consequences: we are seeing, for example, that hurricanes are behaving in a very abnormal way, something that we did not see recently. That is somehow reshaping climate change. Therefore, it is a key element to know what is happening in the oceans and to try to see the inertia that this system has and try to redirect that dynamic.
Which cities will be affected by rising ocean levels? Will we see cities like New York submerged in a few decades?
Climate predictions regarding sea level rise are disturbing. We have to think that many of the big cities, like many millions of inhabitants, are coastal; There are many people living in areas that are very vulnerable to those impacts that are sure to occur in the coming years and decades. And therefore, that is a focus of attention. We must try to take preventive measures and, above all, adaptation.
Climate change is accelerating and it is no longer worth mitigating the change that is going to occur, but rather seeking adaptation measures. Cities like New York and other large cities are already working on projects to see how one can adapt to that rise that will surely come.
There is another important issue on the table, which is climate-induced migratory movements, climate refugees:
The problem of climate migration is an even more negative point regardless of the impacts of climate change itself; because there is much talk about the rise in sea level, that summers are going to be unbearable … But this type of movement, of large numbers of people from one area to another, conflicts linked to natural resources, or the scarcity of Water , can, in the end, be the most important thing, regardless of the climate prediction telling you that the Spanish coasts may be threatened in a few years by sea level.
Are climate summits good for anything?
The only way we have to get all countries to move in the right direction is through these macro-events that, certainly, bring together many people, which certainly have an environmental impact (it must also be said), but we do not know how to do it otherwise way.
Here, what is being asked for is greater ambition when it comes to leading the economies of the countries and reconverting their energy sources. Until recently, it seemed that there was a certain margin and there was talk of decades, but according to the latest scientific reports out there, it is something that must be done urgently. And perhaps this summit will underpin that and there is a lot of insistence that not only must we comply with the Paris Agreement, but that we must be more ambitious. This is what has been transmitted, at least, from the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
What do you think of the people who deny that climate change is anthropogenic, the so-called climate change deniers?
The word that occurs to me to describe a climate change denier is that he is an unscientific person , who is on the fringes of science. For many years (it is not a thing of the moment) the causal relationship that our activities linked to greenhouse gas emissions have with what is happening on a planetary level in terms of climate, evolution, has been demonstrated. that climate change is having. Without those activities of ours, without those emissions, science cannot explain how the climate is behaving and, above all, how it is accelerating, which is really worrying.
Will the Earth recover from human aggression?
It is clear that on a geological level, even if there were a great catastrophe (even think of a war conflict with nuclear weapons), the planet was not going to be destroyed, there would still be life. The problem we have right now is that our society has developed and grown excessively; it is consuming many natural resources.
I do not conceive the Earth depleted of natural resources and that we continue to have a place in it. That is the main problem and what we are concerned about.
José Miguel Viñas (@divulgameteo) is a physicist (specialty in Air Physics), scientific communicator and consultant for the World Meteorological Organization. Author of 7 books, the most recent is Knowing Meteorology, Illustrated Dictionary of Weather and Climate (Alianza Editorial, 2019).
