Writing in the journal Nature ahead of COP28, a team of Met Office scientists has emphasized that—surprisingly—there is currently no formally agreed way of defining the current level of global warming relevant to the Paris Agreement.
They have proposed a solution.
While the global average temperature in a particular year is well-known, this will not be suitable as an indicator of whether the “Paris 1.5” has been breached or not, because the Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming, not individual years.
But no alternative has yet been formally agreed.
Without an agreement on what will count as breaching the Paris 1.5, there may be confusion and delay in responding.
This is by design. They knew the Paris 1.5 was a virtue signal — nearly impossible to achieve. You don’t set a KPI without the metrics for measuring it, unless that KPI is irrelevant to you.
When we hit 1.5 they’ll do the same for 2. When we hit 2 they’ll do the same for 2.5.
A house has burned to the ground, and exists as smoldering ash. Let’s have a meeting to agree on the temperature at which the structure might burn so we can know when to build the fire department.
