What is carbon neutrality and how can it be achieved by 2050?

Climate change is already affecting the entire world, with extreme weather conditions such as drought, heat waves, heavy rain, floods and landslides becoming more frequent, including in Europe. Other consequences of the rapidly changing climate include rising sea levels, ocean acidification and loss of biodiversity.

In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a threshold the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) suggests is safe – carbon neutrality by mid-21st century is essential. This target is also laid down in the Paris agreement signed by 195 countries, including the EU.

In December 2019, the European Commission presented the European Green Deal, its flagship plan that aims to make Europe climate neutral by 2050. This target will be reached through the European Climate Law that sets climate neutrality into binding EU legislation.

In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal [...], Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, [...], and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century[...].

Article 4 of the Paris agreement

Source"In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal [...], Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, [...], and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century[...]."Opens in a new window

Carbon Neutrality. Photo by Sebastian Pichler on Unsplash

Forests help to absorb carbon from the atlmosphere. Photo by Sebastian Pichler on Unsplash

What is carbon neutrality?

Carbon neutrality means having a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in carbon sinks. Removing carbon oxide from the atmosphere and then storing it is known as carbon sequestration. In order to achieve net zero emissions, all worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will have to be counterbalanced by carbon sequestration.

Carbon sink is any system that absorbs more carbon than it emits. The main natural carbon sinks are soil, forests and oceans. According to estimates, natural sinks remove between 9.5 and 11 gigatonne of CO2 per year. Annual global CO2 emissions reached 37.8 gigatonne in 2021.

The economic reality of undependable energy sources like wind and solar, is beginning to become really vivid and has damaged the UK economy and German economy, probably irreversibly. Despite Mr Bahnas' views, even the IPCC cannot find real evidence of any climate change over the last 40 years, the climate is so noisy: they resort to predictions of doom in the future based on flawed computer models. China, India and the USA are the beneficiaries of Europe's mad pursuit of Nut Zero.

Achieving a zero-carbon economy earlier than 2050 is an ambitious goal, but several factors could influence the European Union’s chances:

While these factors can improve the chances, achieving zero-carbon status much earlier than 2050 would require unprecedented coordination, investment, and innovation. The EU’s current policies and targets are aligned with the 2050 goal, but with concerted effort and favorable conditions, an earlier achievement is possible, though challenging.

Jorge Morales Pedraza It is equally likely that the fairies will come along and provide CCS and economical battery storage. Regarding international cooperation, this is falling every month as the UN looks on helplessly. But, where is the mythical climate change that we are protecting the world from: every fear-mongering claim has been demolished: notably, polar bear disappearance, coral reef doom and island flooding. We are being threatened by computer games not science!

I'll give you a concrete example. I've been living in Vienna since 1981. During the 1980s, the city's snowfall was very heavy, reaching temperatures of up to -20 degrees. Summers were around 25 degrees, with many very cloudy days.

In the 1990s, the city's snowfall was much lower, reaching temperatures of up to -5 degrees with not very heavy snowfall.

In the 2020s, winters were very mild, with almost no snowfall in winter in the city and summers above 30 degrees with very sunny days. Climate change is more than evident!

Jorge Morales Pedraza , Thank you for your response to my point about climate change. I would refer you to Österreichische Beiträge zu Meteorologie und Geophysik: AUSTRIAN LONG-TERM CLIMATE 1767-2000, for a detailed look at Austria’s long term climatic behaviour: you will see that your start date was during a low temperature period (you may recall the threat of an ice age that was so prevalent in the 1970s). A 60 year period is short in climate history and represents one climate cycle only. The Austrian climate is behaving well and is, as always, very noisy, (unlike Vienna).

Jorge Morales Pedraza:

Jack Broughton has it right. The Sun is currently at a solar minimum, and the Erath's temperature fell until the Hunga Tonga submarine volcano erupted violently and sent 146 million tonnes of water into the stratosphere. This raised Erath's temperature by 0.8C. It will fall again as the water dissipates.

See this Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fevrgffkjdl3c19l0bq3q/The-Sun-vs-CO2-as-the-cause-of-climate-change-to-2050.pdf?rlkey=ezxel2zzm3fwbm64u0c5szlvr&dl=0

The warming by CO2 is so slight that it is undetectable. See this Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fbuyvm7m8xq2m70xaljiz/Only-the-greenhouse-gas-water-vapor-measurably-warms-the-Earth-JBASV20A8-Lightfoot-002.pdf?rlkey=xqlf14uewrw3cx7c03grrjjqj&dl=0

I hope this helps.

According to the Union's Copernicus Agency, in recent years, high temperature records, i.e. the highest atmospheric temperatures for a particular month in the context of the multi-year history of measurements, have been continuously recorded in various places in Europe and the world with each successive month. In addition, according to the EU's Copernicus Agency, in 2024 the average temperature level of the planet's atmosphere has risen by 1.5 degrees C relative to the beginning of the first industrial revolution, i.e. as much as that determined in 2015 at the UN climate summit in Paris. According to the World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus program, i.e. the European Union's Earth observation program, Europe is the fastest warming continent. Since the beginning of the industrial age, the planet's average temperature has risen by about 2.5 degrees C. Globally, the increase has been about 1 deg C lower.

Another consequence of the accelerating process of global warming is the ever-increasing and recorded record air temperatures in various parts of the world, including Europe, during the summer heatwave. In the UK, a record temperature of 34.4 degrees C was recorded on August 13, 2024. Data has just been published showing that 50,000 people in Europe in 2023 died prematurely due to the heat. The highest number of premature deaths due to heat in 2023 occurred in Greece, Spain and Italy.

In the late spring of 2024, orange juice prices quickly rose strongly by several tens of percent, as many plantations in Florida, Brazil and other regions of the world were damaged by climatic disasters, including droughts or sudden heavy downpours, etc. Olive oil prices also rose rapidly in June 2024 due to a much lower olive harvest in southern European countries. The lower harvest is due to a permanent drought. The aforementioned drought is another effect of the ongoing global warming process.

This is further evidence that the process of carrying out a pro-environmental transformation of the economy needs to be accelerated in order to smoothly build a sustainable, green, zero-carbon zero-growth and closed-loop economy. The key components of realizing the process of carrying out the pro-environmental transformation of the economy are the development of green, renewable, zero-carbon energy, clean transportation, sustainable organic agriculture, sustainable production, sustainable consumption, sustainable construction, sustainable tourism, sustainable waste management, and so on. And how to do this I described in the above article:

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY DEVELOPMENT AS A KEY ELEMENT OF THE PRO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ECONOMY TOWARDS GREEN ECONOMY AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Article IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY DEVE...

What are your thoughts on this topic?

I invite you to join me in scientific cooperation on this issue.

Kind regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

The earth is warming naturally after a little ice age that killed millions.

1. Cold kills over 10 times as many people as heat, even the BMJ admit this, so warming is a good thing for most people.

2. The measuring stations in the western world are of dubious validity: in the UK over 80% are below category 2 of the WMO classification system, which renders them useless for accuracy (errors between 2 and 5 deg K). In the USA a similar situation applies and increasing numbers of temperatures are being measured in or close to cities where large UHI effects totally distort the values.

It appears that over half of the temperature rise is attributable to measurement errors, but why let that get in the way of a fear-campaign tah allows governments to spend without question?

The ocean and satellite temperatures are the least fiddled and adjusted.