New research reveals doubts and hopes that the world will meet climate goals

How hot will it get? This is one of the most important and difficult questions remaining regarding climate change. The answer lies in not only how sensitive our climate is to greenhouse gases, but also how much carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases we will emit as a civilization in the coming decades. It also depends on what you choose.

To think more clearly about this issue, we asked authors who contributed to reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share their best guesses about where the world is heading.

Our recently published findings show that most of the climate experts we responded to believe the Earth is likely to exceed the internationally agreed warming targets of 1.5°C and ‘well below 2°C’. It shows that

In fact, the median estimate was 2.7 °C by 2100. This is approximately what would be expected if countries around the world failed to implement new policies in line with their goals and commitments and simply maintained their existing levels of action.

Frankly, this could have devastating consequences for humanity. We are already seeing devastating consequences such as more flooding, hotter heatwaves and massive wildfires, with temperatures rising just 1.3 degrees Celsius and 2.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This is less than half of the temperature.

However, not all authors think the same way, so to further clarify the IPCC report process and disagreements among authors, we conducted an email survey to We provided responses to 211 report authors. Our participants represented all IPCC working groups and all inhabited continents.

The data they shared offers a glimpse into the dynamics of modern climate science.

wide range of beliefs

Our research shows that authors share a wide range of estimates about possible climate outcomes.

A small number of experts surveyed believe that temperatures are likely to remain below 2°C, while others believe that exceeding 3°C will lead to even more alarming levels of climate warming. . About 86% of participants estimated that more than 2 °C of warming will occur by 2100.

When we designed this study, we wondered whether IPCC authors working on climate change solutions might be more optimistic than authors working on climate vulnerability and adaptation. . One reason is that experts working on solutions may be more aware of recent research showing that worst-case climate change is becoming less likely. However, we found only weak evidence for this hypothesis.

In some ways, this is a good sign because it suggests that researchers are not working in isolated silos, each with their own beliefs.

complex recognition

A unique feature of this study was that we asked the IPCC authors how they thought other study participants would answer the same questions. We were interested in knowing the extent to which experts in this field believe that other experts share similar beliefs to them. Perceptions of one’s peers’ beliefs are important because they can strongly influence one’s own beliefs and behavior.

Participants in our study believed very strongly that their colleagues’ views about expected future warming were consistent with their beliefs. Even those who predicted a very high or very low amount of future warming mistakenly believed that their colleagues would make similar predictions.

This is not particularly surprising. In many areas, people tend to extrapolate their colleagues’ beliefs by examining their own beliefs and then adjusting up or down, but this is often insufficient. Researchers call this the false consensus effect, and we found this effect to be very pronounced in our results.

Because IPCC authors are trusted public figures and are often asked to share their ideas with decision-makers and the media, authors can be confident that their expectations are widely shared by their colleagues. If you believe this, this finding could be problematic.

Multidisciplinary benefits

We can help professionals better understand the range of beliefs held by their communities and communicate with more nuance and awareness about whether their personal beliefs are part of a larger consensus. We see our research as an opportunity to do so.

Climate experts are not oracles. And while the “wisdom of the crowd” average is often more accurate than a single expert, it is very difficult to predict the future decades from now.

The balance of evidence from this study reaffirms a message that climate scientists have long repeated: that current efforts to tackle climate change are insufficient and more progress is urgently needed. It is something.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.