Wildfires in Portugal. Wikimedia Commons. Two new studies paint a sobering picture for the future of the Earth in a changing climate. One report by a team of American scientists estimates there’s only a five percent chance that global warming can be kept below 2 degrees celsius by 2100. On the other hand, there’s a 95 percent likelihood the increase will be more like 2 to 4.9 degrees! That upper range would generally be considered by many experts as catastrophic for life on earth. And it would clearly represent a failure of the Paris Climate Accord . That agreement, signed last year, commits almost 200 member countries, including Canada, to limit the increase to “well under 2 degrees” above pre-industrial levels. Achieving that goal, adds the study, “will require carbon intensity to decline much faster than in the recent past.” The second study (done jointly by a researcher with the Max Planck Institute in Germany and another from the University of Colorado), mak
