Steve MacLellan

One degree

This is where we are now, one degree above the pre-industrial average  global temperature of roughly 1850 to 1900. Greenland’s ice sheet is  turning blue with meltwater lakes and streams. Half the Arctic sea ice  is gone. Antarctica’s glaciers are sliding faster into the sea, and  mountain glaciers everywhere are shrinking.

Extreme rainfall and flooding are becoming routine. So are heatwaves and wildfires like those currently afflicting California. Meanwhile, “ocean heatwaves” create dead zones because warm water holds too little oxygen for sea life.

Canada, like other signatories to the Paris  Agreement, is committed to limit warming to 1.5 C — in effect,  accepting all this as the new status quo. But as Lynas observes, no one  is slowing emissions in the slightest. The Keeling curve,  which measures atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, shows CO2 is now at  412.88 parts per million, and rising. So the global temperature must  eventually rise to:

Two degrees….