There’s a 93 percent chance we’ll be barreling toward a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century, which is a potentially catastrophic level of warming.
The summer of 2023 was intense: deadly wildfires, massive storms, and record-breaking heat. Although scientists exercise great care before linking individual weather events to climate change, the rise in global temperatures caused by human activities has increased the severity, likelihood, and duration of such conditions.
Globally, 2024 is on pace to be the hottest year on record. The Paris Agreement aims to limit the rise of the average global temperature to below 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. However, if humankind continues its business-as-usual approach to climate change, there’s a 93 percent chance we’ll be barreling toward a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century, which is a potentially catastrophic level of warming.
A warning and a reckoning
In 1992, 1,700 scientists around the world issued a chilling “warning to humanity.” The infamous letter declared that humanity would be on a “collision course” with the natural world if we did not rein in their environmentally damaging activities.
Such apocalyptic thinking might be easy to mock and only partially helpful in inspiring political action if the end times are nigh. In 2019, however, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries co-signed their names to an updated—and even bleaker statement on the issue.
The most recent version, from 2020, is titled “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.” It asserts that most of the environmental challenges raised in the original letter remain unsolved and require “bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies.”
Original source: https://www.all-creatures.org
