The UN panel on climate change yesterday told the world that global warming was dangerously close to being out of control — and that humans were “unequivocally” to blame.
Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, the report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.
In other words, the deadly heat waves, gargantuan hurricanes and other weather extremes that are already happening will only become more severe.
Photo: AFP
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report as a “code red for humanity.”
“The alarm bells are deafening,” he said in a statement. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”
In three months’ time, the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, will try to wring much more ambitious climate action out of the nations of the world, and the money to go with it.
Photo: AFP / Zapolyarnaya Pravda newspaper / Irina Yarinskaya
Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the IPCC report gives the most comprehensive and detailed picture yet of how climate change is altering the natural world — and what could still be ahead.
Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the average global temperature is likely to reach or cross the 1.5oC warming threshold within 20 years, it said.
The pledges to cut emissions made so far are nowhere near enough to start reducing the level of greenhouse gases — mostly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — accumulated in the atmosphere.
The report says emissions “unequivocally caused by human activities” have already pushed the average global temperature up 1.1oC from its pre-industrial average, and would have raised it 0.5oC further without the tempering effect of pollution in the atmosphere.
A rise of 1.5oC is generally seen as the most that humanity could cope with without suffering widespread economic and social upheaval. The 1.1oC warming already recorded has been enough to unleash disastrous weather.
This year, heat waves killed hundreds in the US and smashed records around the world. Wildfires fueled by heat and drought are sweeping away entire towns in the west of the US, releasing record carbon dioxide emissions from Siberian forests, and driving Greeks to flee their homes by ferry.
Some changes are already “locked in.” Greenland’s sheet of land-ice is “virtually certain” to continue melting, and raising the sea level, which would continue to rise for centuries to come as the oceans warm and expand, the report said.
Even if emissions are slashed in the next decade, average temperatures could still be up 1.5oC by 2040 and possibly 1.6oC by 2060 before stabilizing, it said, adding that if the world instead continues on its current trajectory, the rise could be 2oC by 2060 and 2.7oC by the end of the century.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS