BAKU, Azerbaijan -- For the third straight year, efforts to fight climate change haven't lowered projections for how hot the world is likely to get — and recent developments in China and the United States are likely to slightly worsen the outlook, according to an analysis Thursday. The analysis comes as countries come together for the 29th edition of the United Nations climate talks, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, where nations are trying to set new targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task. But Earth remains on a path to be 2.
7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists and analysts who study government policies and translate that into projections of warming. If emissions are still rising and temperature projections are no longer dropping, people should wonder if the United Nations climate negotiations known as COP are doing any good, Hare said.
“There’s an awful lot going on that’s positive here, but on the big picture of actually getting stuff done to reduce emissions ...
to me it feels broken,” Hare said. The world has already warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.
3 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That's near the 1.5-degree (2.
7 F) limit that countries agreed to at 2015 climate talks in Paris. Climate scientists say the atmospheric warming, mainly from human burning of fossil fuels, is causin.