Why COP-26 in Glasgow Won’t Save Us.
Neither will COP 27, 28, or 50.
Despite proclamations to the contrary by the U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, to those of us who have been paying increasing attention to the state and the politics of climate change, COP-26 is already set to be an abject failure.
There have been 25 COP (Conference Of the Parties) meetings on climate change since 1995 and several international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2 and methane, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (which Pres. Bush pulled out of in 2001) and the Paris Agreement of 2015 (which the twice-impeached Pres. Trump pulled out of before he lost and left for Mar-a-Lago)
From 1850–1980 the rate of warming was about 0.07 C per decade.
Around 1950 there was a huge postwar global economic boom. The increase in the yearly amounts of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere was explosive. Unsurprisingly, we find that atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased unabated during this period, rising from 310 in 1950 to 390 ppm by 1980.
Once that carbon accumulated, the temperature rise was 0.18 per decade from 1980–2010. Cumulatively the globe is 1.2 degrees C warmer today than in 1850.
Now the CO2 concentration is at 414 ppm.
