Thread by @patrickgaley

The @UN has just released its most detailed report on #climatechange.

It does not make for pretty reading: yahoo.com/news/un-warns-…

The short version: unless we can limit temperature rise to 1.5C, we are all screwed.

The report details two scenarios:

1.5C hotter, and 2C hotter. These are set out in the Paris climate treaty, where nations agreed to limit temperature rises to "well below" 2C and to 1.5C if at all possible.

The two are not the same futures.

We are currently on a path to at least 3-4C hotter by the end of the century.

Even if all fossil fuel use ended tomorrow (and 2017 was a record year for global emissions), we have still put so much CO2 into the atmosphere that no one really knows how Earth will react.

1.5C is better for us than 2C in every conceivable way. It will save billions of dollars, millions of lives and, while it will require enormous adaptation as areas become unlivable, we can survive it.

But the whole plan is predicated on two ideas:

1. The world will drastically reduce CO2 emissions
2. We can invent our way out of this mess

As mentioned, not only are we not close to cutting carbon emissions, we are in fact *increasing* them year on year

I am not kidding here:

The plan also involves biofuel farms twice the size of INDIA, and burying 1,200 BILLION tonnes of CO2 underground.

That's like saying: I can make gold out of lead, I just need to invent a machine that does that first.

A 2C world looks bad, but we can survive it.

If we continue the rest of the century how we have started it, however, we will be closer to 4C hotter. This map was developed with New Scientist, and shows us what that world might look like:

To do anything remotely like enough, global governments need to set aside national interests and take bold, collective and timely action on a scale never approached in human history.

Not only are they not doing so, they are arguing over minutiae. They are presenting deliberate blocks to any action plan.

Just this weekend, Saudi Arabia threatened to stonewall today's warning over language suggesting CO2 emissions need to fall "well before" 2030

500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa. If we do little to prevent temperature rises, this area will become unlivable by 2100.

Now look at how the world reacts to 5 million Syrian refugees. Then imagine how we'd deal with 100 times that amount

The report predicts a 2.7C rise by 2040 - that means food crises, millions of environmental refugees, killer floods and heatwaves are coming within the next 22 years.

If you have a bottle of something you've been saving for a special occasion, today's now as good as any to open

In fact, scientists recently added a new category for projecting the impact of climate change.

"Existential" doesn't sound too smart, does it? climateemergencydeclaration.org/wp-content/upl…

So the science in the @IPCC_CH report is *crystal* clear.

More than 60 climated scientists say there is no way to mitigate #climatechange without getting rid of coal.

@WorldCoal, amazingly, begs to differ: worldcoal.org/wca-responds-i…