David Spratt

There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals, market solutions and non-disruptive change, and activists and key researchers who see the world hurtling towards climate breakdown and social collapse.

The big picture, as illustrated below, is that global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, after a Covid blip, and the production of coal, oil and gas all reached record highs in 2023.

Whilst the global impact of climate disruption is rapidly accelerating, and the last, record-breaking year has been extraordinary, public concern in Australia about it is waning, and the government bears much of the responsibility.

So is the climate system, for all practical purposes, now close to a 1.5°C trend?  If CMIP6 is to be taken at face value, the answer is yes. And the data now seems consistent with those models.

The heat and extreme climate records of 2023 shocked scientists. So where are we heading? Given current trends, the world will zoom past 2°C of warming and the Paris climate goal of limiting warming to 1.5-2°C.

With devastating extreme heat and storms and floods, 2023 was the first year 1.5°C warmer than the 1850-1900 baseline, and both Antarctic sea-ice loss and record northern hemisphere sea-surface temperatures were way beyond the ranges projected by climate models.