More devastating fires in California. Persistent drought in the Southwest. Record flooding in Europe and Africa. A heat wave, of all things, in Greenland. Climate change and its effects are accelerating, with climate related disasters piling up, season after season. Seas are warming and rising faster, putting more cities at risk of tidal flooding or worse. Glaciers are melting at a pace many researchers did not expect for decades. The amount of Arctic sea ice has declined so rapidly that the region may see ice-free summers by 2030.
Even the ground itself is warming faster. Permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, is thawing more rapidly than it was in 2019, threatening the release of large amounts of long-stored carbon and methane that will without a doubt make warming even worse, in what scientists call a climate feedback loop. Earth has already crossed a critical threshold for global warming ,many European nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the loss of economy and lives that is expected to occur before 2040.Starting with a severe demographic change because of the loss of more than 75,000 elderly directly due to climate change expected by 2040!
The United Nations offers the most comprehensive understanding to date of ways in which the planet is changing. It says conservatively that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre industrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s,”Most scientists believe that the actual number will be closer to 3 degrees celsius by 2040 as humans are not likely to discontinue to burn coal, oil and natural gas. Ironically this greed will cost nations more than it helps even though a few corporate oligarchs will benefit the majority of the planet will face an existential threat caused by the greed of a few.
The breakneck speed of global warming exceeds the pace of efforts to protect billions of vulnerable people, according to a new report released by the world's top climate scientists. The report warns of a growing mismatch between rising temperatures and slow, fragmented efforts to adapt, leaving little time for catching up before “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity” is sealed shut. “Human-induced climate change and war against Ukraine have direct connections and the same roots. They are fossil fuels and humanity's dependence on
them,” said Krakovska, a senior scientist at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, in her remarks on Sunday to IPCC colleagues.
A group of more than 270 scientists and 675 contributors from around the world examined every major natural and human domain, including freshwater, coasts, cities, agriculture, health, and poverty. Their consensus findings assert that severe consequences of climate change are already visible across the board in unprecedented heat waves, rising sea levels, and record-breaking wildfires. They also show that strategic adaptation can save lives. A substantial
change since the last version of this report, released in 2014, is that many projections about how climate change will unfold have been subsumed by observations about how it already has. (Information from New York Post and Bloomberg for the purpose of Education)
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