1.5 Degree Temperature Rise Poses No ‘Existential Threat to Humanity,’ Says New UN Climate Change Chief

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) British delegate Jim Skea looks on as he attends the opening meeting of the 50th session of the U.N. body for assessing the science related to climate change, in Geneva, Switzerland, on Aug. 2, 2019. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Climate change activists consistently warning of a doomsday in the near future are harming efforts to tackle the current situation, warned Prof. Jim Skea, the newly elected head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Mr. Skea made the comments during interviews with major German news outlets over the weekend, just days after he was elected to the new role at the international panel, which monitors and assesses the science related to climate change.

“If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he told German news agency DPA on July 29.

Elsewhere, Mr. Skea, who has more than 40 years of experience in climate science, stressed that global temperatures increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era doesn’t pose an “existential threat to humanity.”

Under the Paris Climate Agreement—adopted in 2015 and formally ratified in 2016—hundreds of nations agreed to pursue efforts to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius in an effort to “significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change.”

However, estimates suggest that global emissions mean we are currently tracking above that goal.

‘We Will Not Die Out’

Mr. Skea also told Der Spiegel magazine that “we should not despair and fall into a state of shock” if global temperatures increase by this amount and that “the world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees.”

“It will, however, be a more dangerous world,” Mr. Skea said, noting that social tensions may rise but “we will not die out.”

He did say that “man-made” climate change exists and that we can no longer deny it.

“Man has caused this global crisis and caused massive damage to the planet,” Mr. Skea said. “The task now is to prevent something even worse from happening.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivers remarks to reporters outside the U.N. Security Council at U.N. headquarters in New York City on April 20, 2023. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

“Every measure we take to weaken climate change helps.”

He added that climate change can be limited via the “expansion of renewable energies, which replace climate-damaging coal-fired power plants, gas heating, or oil in industry and transport.”

When Mr. Skea became head of the IPCC on July 26, he declared more broadly, “Climate change is an existential threat to our planet.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres followed on July 27—citing observations from the European Union’s Copernicus program for earth observation of record-breaking July temperatures across the world, including parts of Europe and the Americas—warning that “the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”

“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” Mr. Guterres said, warning of “children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, and workers collapsing in scorching heat.”

Meanwhile, scientists from the World Meteorological Organization have also sounded the alarm, describing July’s conditions as “remarkable and unprecedented” and warning that global average temperatures will likely temporarily exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature change threshold at last once over the next five years.

Dissenting Climate Experts Silenced

However, many experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the impending climate doomsday regularly cited by environmental activists, including more than 1,100 scientists and professionals who signed a statement in 2022 declaring that ”there is no climate emergency.”

Some of those experts, including Nobel prize-winning physicist John F. Clauser, have allegedly been censored because of their skepticism over climate change.

Mr. Clauser, who has previously voiced his disagreement with the Biden administration’s climate policies, was scheduled to present a seminar to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about climate models on July 25 but was pulled from the event, according to the CO2 Coalition, a non-partisan educational foundation of which Mr. Clauser is a board member.

It is not clear why Mr. Clauser’s presentation was pulled.

Before the scheduled event, Mr. Clauser had also told the Korea Quantum Conference, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis,” adding that some of the “key processes” used in models on climate change “are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.”

The Epoch Times contacted the IMF for further comment but received none by press time.