A report released Monday by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns of more extreme weather conditions – and predicts accelerated global warming conditions.
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| An article in Atlantic magazine on the report says warming and its effects are getting worse that will continue “until humanity reduces its greenhouse-gas pollution to zero. |
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This is the sixth periodic report from the IPSS – and some are saying it’s the most significant climate report published in years by the international science community.
The last such report was all the way back in 2013.
This current report is apocalyptic in tone.
"It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land," the report says. It warns that many of the changes inflicted on the planet — especially the oceans — will be "irreversible for centuries to millennia," and continued warming will lead to an acceleration of "extreme events unprecedented in the observational record."
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the report a "code red for humanity."
But in some cases the predictions are not as dire as the quotes and media headlines would suggest.
For example, the report says the Earth has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius since the last half of the 19th century, which is just 0.1 degree warmer than its last estimate.
But the report says the Earth is probably warmer now than it has been at any time since the beginning of the last Ice Age, 125,000 years ago. It also says global temperatures have warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius, or nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the Industrial Revolution began – a level of change it says is without parallel in known history.'
The report also finds that that since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period over the past 2,000 years.
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The report also predicts we will seem more of what appears a number of recent extreme weather events, including major heat waves, droughts, wild fires, and flooding, and says these extremes are directly caused by global warming.
UN Climate Report Predicts Rising Sea Levels
Source: BBC
However, a response to the report in guest column in the Wall Street Journal by Steven Koonin, a professor at New York University, notes that “The summary of the most recent US government climate report, for instance, said heat waves across the country have become more frequent since 1960, but neglected to mention that the body of the report shows they are no more common today than they were in 1900.”
An article in Atlantic magazine on the report says warming and its effects are getting worse that will continue “until humanity reduces its greenhouse-gas pollution to zero, which can be accomplished only by dethroning oil, coal, and gas as the central energy sources powering the global economy.”
The also report states that humanity is “unequivocally” responsible for climate change. “In past reports, we’ve had to make that statement more hesitantly. Now it’s a statement of fact,” Gregory Flato, a vice chair of the group that authored the report and a senior research scientist within the Canadian government, told the Atlantic.
The report also warns that the world will see a 1.5C increase in temperatures by 2040 in all scenarios, much earlier that previous estimates. If emissions aren't slashed in the next few years, this will happen even more quickly.
The UN Climate accords were meant to drive changes that would keep global warming to that 1.5C rise versus pre-Industrial age temperatures.
So what if anything can be done?
Some scientists are hopeful that if global emissions can be but in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century, it could halt and possibly reverse the rise in temperatures.
But that seems highly unlikely given current trends.
What is your reaction to the UN Climate report? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
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