A major climate report will slam the door on wishful thinking

The leading international body of climate change researchers is preparing to release a major report Sunday night on the impacts of global warming and what it would take to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, a goal that looks increasingly unlikely.

Smoke billows from smokestacks and a coal fired generator
 at a steel factory in Hebei, China. The IPCC will warn that
 the world isn’t doing enough to clean up facilities like this one.

The report is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international consortium of hundreds of climate researchers convened by the United Nations. Authors are meeting this week in Incheon, South Korea, to finalize their findings, but Climate Home News obtained an early leaked draft.

Why examine the prospects for limiting global warming to 1.5°C? Because under the Paris agreement, countries agreed that the goal should be to limit warming to below 2°C by 2100, with a nice-to-have target of capping warming at 1.5°C.

Read the story by Umair Irfan from Vox - “A major climate report will slam the door on wishful thinking.”