{"id":7835,"date":"2026-05-19T16:02:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T16:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=7835"},"modified":"2026-05-19T16:02:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T16:02:59","slug":"climate-scientists-update-predictions-with-2015-goal-no-longer-plausible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=7835","title":{"rendered":"Climate scientists update predictions, with 2015 goal no longer plausible"},"content":{"rendered":"

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Scientists are jettisoning their worst- and best-case scenarios for a warming world as no longer plausible. That shows how modest gains in the fight to curb climate change have dialed back the most catastrophic of future heating but also confirmed that there\u2019s no chance to limit warming to the international goal set in 2015.<\/p>

Read more Trump administration plans to admit more white South Africans as refugees this year<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers\u2019 new list of seven plausible carbon pollution scenarios for the future are pushing aside two staples of climate policy: the extremes on either end.<\/p>\n

The extremes have become less probable in the past several years because of how we power our world. Carbon dioxide, released from the burning of gas, oil and coal, is chiefly responsible for warming. Increasing use of green energies, like solar, wind and geothermal, which don\u2019t emit carbon dioxide, have lowered top end carbon pollution projections. However, because those changes haven\u2019t been fast enough, the bottom end projections have risen.<\/p>\n

The Paris climate agreement in 2015 set a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, or the mid-1800s, giving rise to the mantra \u201c1.5 to stay alive,\u201d but now scientists say that even their best-case scenario still shoots past that signature temperature mark. On the other end, those same new scenarios no longer include the coal-heavy future that would lead to 4.5 degrees Celsius (8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100, a scary scenario that many scientific studies used in their future projections.<\/p>\n

The new proposed worst-case scenario has an end-of-the-century warming of about 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit), a full degree (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) less than the old scenario, while the updated best-case future is a couple tenths of a degree Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than previously theorized, squeezing past the Paris goal, said climate scientist Detlef Van Vuuren of Utrecht University, lead author of a recent study laying out future scenarios.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is kind of a narrowing of the futures. It cannot be as bad as we thought, but it cannot be as good as we hoped,\u201d said Johan Rockstr\u00f6m, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.<\/p>\n

The scenarios include a \u201cmiddle\u201d one where by the end of the century the world warms 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, which is roughly the path society is currently on, scientists said. The world is now about 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. Even tenths of a degree of warming cause problems for Earth\u2019s ecosystems, as species die off, fresh water becomes more scarce and extreme weather events, such as flooding and heat waves, intensify.<\/p>

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    It\u2019s too late to keep below 1.5 degree goal<\/h4>\n

    Because carbon pollution keeps rising globally and stays in the atmosphere for about century, the best-case scenario is for warming to shoot past the 1.5 degree mark, peak at 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) for maybe as long as 70 years, and eventually somehow come back down below 1.5 degrees if a technology can be designed to remove massive amounts of carbon from the air, said nine of the 10 scientists interviewed for this article. The world is warming at a pace of a tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) every five years, they said.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThis is just physics,\u201d said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, a policy institute. \u201cWe\u2019re losing the ability to limit warming even by two degrees without strong action and people need to be aware of that and be aware that it\u2019s a political failure. It\u2019s not an act of God or anything. It is just because politicians in many places are not acting fast enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The 1.5 goal is not just a number, said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, co-author of a U.N. science report detailing the harms of going higher than 1.5 degrees.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of implications for, you know, not being able to meet the 1.5. And, of course, the people who will suffer the most are on the small island developing states,\u201d Mahowald said. \u201cSome of them will go underwater.\u201d<\/p>

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