Global warming predictions may have been too gloomy

By Ben Webster, Environment Editor of The London Times.

"When 194 nations met in Paris in 2015 and agreed to try to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5C, many scientists dismissed the goal as unattainable.

They said it would be politically and economically impossible to cut emissions fast enough and that the world would have to prepare for the effects of an increase of more than 1.5C, including worse droughts and heatwaves and islands disappearing beneath rising seas.

Now it turns out the scientists were being too pessimistic and had been led astray by computer models which overstated the rate of warming.

Other factors have also contributed to the new, more optimistic assessment, including the cost of renewable energy and China’s emissions growth both falling faster than almost anyone had predicted.
Many climate sceptics had, however, repeatedly criticised climate scientists’ computer models for being “on the hot side” and diverging from the slower warming trend shown in actual records.

Computer models remain the best way of working out how quickly we need to cut emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, but climate scientists could be nimbler at revising them when actual temperature readings diverge from predictions."