The UN Secretary-General’s warning was dramatic: climate change is now “out of control”. The situation should not be seen as fatalistic, says the German climate researcher Latif.
Despite alarming news about increasingly frequent heat waves, forest fires and storms, climate researcher Mojib Latif does not believe that the fight against global warming is hopeless.
“Scientists assume that the “point of no return” has not yet been reached. It would still be possible to limit global warming to the level specified in the Paris Climate Agreement – that is, to well below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial times, preferably to 1.5 degrees,” said the professor at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel of the German Press Agency in Berlin.
Latif responded to warnings from UN Secretary-General António Guterres. He had said that climate change was “out of control”.
The dangers
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that in order to achieve the 1.5 degree target, global emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases must fall by 48 percent by 2030 and by 80 percent by 2040 compared to 2019.
The planet is currently warming by around 1.1 degrees, in Germany it is already 1.6 degrees. Latif said: “The effects such as heat, drought and heavy rain are already catastrophic in many regions of the world.” Last year was the warmest summer in Europe since records began, with tens of thousands of heat deaths.
Regarding the currently extremely high temperatures in the world’s oceans, including the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Latif said: “On the one hand, warming is stressing marine ecosystems, such as tropical corals – the feared bleaching of corals is becoming more common. On the other hand, warming is leading to a decrease in oxygen levels in the oceans. And there is a risk that the seas will absorb less of the CO2 that humans emit into the atmosphere, with the result of accelerating global warming.”
In addition, the expansion of water associated with warming contributes to the rise in sea levels, the researcher said. Higher temperatures also lead to a higher rate of evaporation, making more energy available in the atmosphere and making extreme weather events more frequent and intense.
Hardly possible to adapt to a warmer world
Latif recently pointed out that Germany’s society and economy cannot adapt to a two to three degree warmer world. “That’s a huge mistake. There are limits to adaptability,” Latif told dpa. “How do you want to adapt to temperatures well above 40 degrees, how to adapt to more frequent torrential rain? How is agriculture supposed to get by without rain?”
In March, a study commissioned by the federal government showed that Germany could face costs of up to 900 billion euros by 2050 as a result of global warming. An example is the flood disaster in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate with damage of more than 40 billion euros.
Source: Stern
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