Rain fell on the highest point of Greenland’s Ice Sheet, known as the Summit, for the first time in recorded history on Saturday. It was the latest anomaly in a series of heatwaves and melting events in the territory this summer that are linked to human-driven climate change.
I often wonder about the future of Adirondack back country roads in an era of climate change and severe rain fall events becoming the new normal.
A special report on 1.5C in 2018 showed the advantages of staying under the limit were massive compared to a 2C world. Getting there would require carbon emissions to be cut in half, essentially, by 2030 and net zero emissions reached by 2050. Otherwise, the limit would be reached between 2030 and 2052.
This new report re-affirms this finding. Under all scenarios, the threshold is reached by 2040. If emissions aren't reined in, 1.5C could be gone in around a decade.
Global climate change is accelerating and human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are the overwhelming cause, according to a landmark report released Monday by the United Nations. There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming this century, but only if countries around the world stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible, the authors warn.
The message to world leaders is more dire, and more unequivocal, than ever before.
"It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change," says Ko Barrett, the vice chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the senior adviser for climate at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Each of the last four decades has been the warmest on record since preindustrial times."
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions quickly would save tens of millions of lives worldwide, a new study finds. It's the latest indication that climate change is deadly to humans, and that the benefits of transitioning to a cleaner economy could be profound.
In recent years, the connection between a hotter planet and human death and disease has become clearer, thanks to a series of research papers. A study published in 2021 found that about a third of heat-related deaths worldwide can be directly attributed to human-caused climate change. A 2020 Lancet report warned that climate change is the biggest global public health threat of the century.
But those findings have not been factored into one of the three major computer models that scientists, economists and the federal government use to calculate the societal costs of carbon emissions. That means economists and policymakers may be underestimating the cost of climate change to human life.