beecee Posted April 4, 2022 Posted April 4, 2022 (edited) https://phys.org/news/2022-04-page-red-climate.html Accelerating global warming is driving a rising tide of impacts that could cause profound human misery and ecological disaster, and there is only one way to avoid catastrophe: drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Spread across 10,000 pages, these are the main takeaways from a trio of UN reports on climate change published in August 2021, February 2022 and on Monday. The three tomes—each with its own roster of hundreds of authors—focus on physical science, impacts and the need to adapt, and finally how to slash carbon pollution. This will be the sixth such trilogy since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered its first report in 1990 and positioned itself as the final word on the science behind global warming. Here are five key findings from the three reports: Beyond a doubt Whatever climate sceptics might say, scientific evidence has removed any lingering doubt that human activity is "unequivocally" responsible for global warming, which has seen the planet heat up an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. more at link..................................... More information: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports Supplementary article: https://phys.org/news/2022-04-obituary-earth-scientists-climate-doom.html No obituary for Earth: Scientists fight climate doom talk: It's not the end of the world. It only seems that way. Climate change is going to get worse, but as gloomy as the latest scientific reports are, including today's from the United Nations, scientist after scientist stresses that curbing global warming is not hopeless. The science says it is not game over for planet Earth or humanity. Action can prevent some of the worst if done soon, they say. After decades of trying to get the public's attention, spur action by governments and fight against organized movements denying the science, climate researchers say they have a new fight on their hands: doomism. It's the feeling that nothing can be done, so why bother. It's young people publicly swearing off having children because of climate change. extract: "Everybody knows it's going to get worse," said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis. "We can do a lot to make it less bad than the worst case scenario." ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Edited April 4, 2022 by beecee
TheVat Posted April 4, 2022 Posted April 4, 2022 I've been reading The Ministry for the Future, KS Robinson's 2020 novel which draws heavily on the IPCC reports and is really straddling the border between speculative hard sci-fi and well-researched futurism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future There are enough novels being written on this theme that it now has its own genre label: cli-fi (climate fiction). Have gotten about halfway through the book. So rich with problem-solving ideas, hard facts, extrapolations, various anonymous first person narrators who step in to recount their experiences at various locations on the warming globe, etc. that it can be a fairly slow read. Robinson really knows his stuff, and is arguably the world's foremost writer of cli-fi. Just mentioning this as something that can dovetail with the UN summaries, and also counter the "doomism" referred to in the phys.org article in the OP.
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