The Climate Crisis is Here and We’re Running Out of Time: IPCC Report
“There is no time for delay and no room for excuses,” declares damning new UN climate report.
Global temperatures have risen 1.1°C, or 2°F since pre-industrial times, with human influence ‘unequivocally’ responsible for wreaking havoc on the world, according to the new highly anticipated report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report comes as extreme weather disasters rage across the globe. In the last few months, we’ve seen deadly heatwaves affect across the U.S. and Canada, floods devastate Germany and China, and wildfires engulf Siberia, Turkey and Greece. With temperatures likely to rise by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, disasters are expected to only become more severe in the coming decades due to human-induced climate change.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as a "code red for humanity".
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” he said in a statement.
“The internationally agreed threshold of 1.5°C is perilously close.
“The public and private sector must work together to ensure a just and rapid transformation to a net-zero global economy. If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe.
“But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”
Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the IPCC report is part of the sixth climate assessment released by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which gives the most comprehensive picture yet of how the climate crisis is impacting the world - and how bad it could get in the years ahead. The findings come just three months before world leaders are due to meet in Glasgow for the global climate summit, Cop26.
This latest report is the first-of-its kind to explicitly state that human activity is to blame for the 1.1°C spike in temperature which has led to increased floods and droughts, rising sea levels, heatwaves, melting glaciers, and more. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” wrote the authors.
As highlighted in the report, some of the damage done will be "irreversible for centuries to millennia." This includes rising sea levels, melting Arctic ice sheets, and the acidification of the ocean’s surface.
"Climate change is not a problem of the future, it's here and now and affecting every region in the world," said Dr Friederike Otto from the University of Oxford, and one of the authors on the report.
U.S. President Joe Biden tweeted: "We can’t wait to tackle the climate crisis. The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. And the cost of inaction keeps mounting."
A Rapidly Closing Window of Opportunity to Act
As per the report, the world will undeniably reach or exceed temperature rises of 1.5°C - the target for limiting global heating set out in the Paris Agreement - over the next two decades. 1.5°C is seen as a threshold beyond which the worst impacts of global warming will be felt. It’s also considered the most that humanity could cope with without suffering widespread economic and social upheaval.
Unless humans curb their release of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases, there will be increases in the intensity and frequency of heat waves, heavy rain, droughts, tropical cyclones, and other extreme weather events.
“Our opportunity to avoid even more catastrophic impacts has an expiration date,” said Helen Mountford, vice president of climate and economics at the World Resources Institute. “The report implies that this decade is truly our last chance to take the actions necessary to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. If we collectively fail to rapidly curb greenhouse gas emissions in the 2020s, that goal will slip out of reach.”
However, even if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are reduced during the next decade, average temperatures might rise by 1.5°C by 2040, potentially hitting 1.6°C by 2060 before stabilising. If the world continues on its current path, we may reach 2.0°C by 2060 and 2.7°C by the end of the century.
But the report also offers a beacon of hope. It says that if global emissions are urgently and aggressively cut in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, we can stop and potentially reverse surface temperatures and surface ocean acidification.
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