Glasgow, Nov 9 (AP) Efforts leading up to and in climate talks have trimmed a couple tenths of a degree off future warming, but still not near enough to reach any of the international goals, according to an analysis by an authoritative independent group of scientists.

Climate Action Tracker, which for years has monitored nations' emission cutting pledges, said based on those submitted targets the world is now on track to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times by the end of this century. That's a far cry from the 2015 Paris climate deal overarching limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius or even its fall-back limit of 2 degrees Celsius.

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The world has already warmed 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

Given what's been pledged “we are likely to be in that area 2.4 degrees, which is still catastrophic climate change and far, far away from the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute and the Climate Action Tracker. And his group's estimate is more optimistic than a United Nations Environment Program update Tuesday that has future warming still at 2.5 to 2.7 degrees.

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Hohne's group also looked at how much warming there would be if other, less firm national promises were put into effect. If all the submitted national targets and other promises that have a bit of the force of law are included, future warming drops down to 2.1 degrees.

And in the “optimistic scenario” if all the net-zero pledges for mid-century are taken into account — and they have little substance in them — warming would be 1.8 degrees, Hohne said. That's the same figure as the International Energy Agency came up with for that optimistic scenario and a tenth of a degree warmer than an independent Australian climate scientist calculated.

Countries must come together urgently to find political consensus on issues like the promise of money from rich countries for poor countries to combat climate change or to adapt to climate shocks, says Alok Sharma, who is chairing the two-week climate talks in Glasgow.

“We have only a few days left,” he said.

Sharma said that the commitments made by countries in the first week of the talks narrowed the gap but weren't enough. He said that countries now have to shift immediately to making good on those promises.

He said that with the commitments the world is bending the curve to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. “But of course, that isn't good enough,” he said, reiterating that the target for these talks was to try to ensure that warming is less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Archie Young, the UK's lead negotiator, said that there have been three main areas where there have been disagreements during the negotiations: a mechanism for helping countries with the losses they suffer from climate change, how the progress on countries' own climate targets would be tracked and the support that poor countries need to become more transparent.

But Sharma maintained that there remained an “opportunity to succeed,” adding that the transition to a zero-carbon economy isn't just possible technologically. "It is economically attractive, and it's accelerating everywhere. And if we successfully manage this, we deliver immense benefits for the world."

(AP)

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