"Unfortunately, time is up.”
Climate: Entering uncharted territory
The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory
Yesterday, William J. Ripple et al. released the 2023 report on the state of our climate. It’s a disturbing read. Earth’s vital signs have worsened. We are in uncharted territory.
For decades, scientists have warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions due to rising global temperatures driven by ongoing human activities that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are witnessing the manifestation of those warnings as an alarming and unprecedented series of climate records being broken, resulting in devastating scenes of damage and suffering.
“We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.”
The article reports minimal progress by humanity in combating climate change. The report aims to communicate climate facts and policy recommendations to scientists, policymakers, and the public, emphasizing the moral duty of scientists and institutions to alert humanity to potential threats and show leadership in taking action.
Please read it and share it to your followers, friends, colleagues, policymakers, and journalists.
Overall conclusion: “Unfortunately, time is up.”
Here are a few key takeaways/extracts from the report, as I don't think anyone could have described it better.
"In 2023, we witnessed an extraordinary series of climate-related records being broken around the world. The rapid pace of change has surprised scientists and caused concern about the dangers of extreme weather, risky climate feedback loops, and the approach of damaging tipping points sooner than expected."
Untold Suffering
“By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals—approximately one-third to one-half of the global population—might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.”
Stopping Warming
“Negative emissions technologies are in an early stage of development, posing uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, scalability, and environmental and societal impacts. As such, we should not rely on unproven carbon removal techniques. Although research efforts should be accelerated, depending heavily on future large-scale carbon removal strategies at this juncture may create a deceptive perception of security and postpone imperative mitigation actions that are essential to tackle climate change now.”
Telling the Truth
“As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms. The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered. Conditions are going to get very distressing and potentially unmanageable for large regions of the world, with the 2.6°C warming expected over the course of the century, even if the self-proposed national emissions reduction commitments of the Paris Agreement are met.”
We need Courage not Hope
“This is our moment to make a profound difference for all life on Earth, and we must embrace it with unwavering courage and determination to create a legacy of change that will stand the test of time."
Read the journal article here and please share it.
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Jillian W Gregg, Johan Rockström, Thomas M Newsome, Beverly E Law, Luiz Marques, Timothy M Lenton, Chi Xu, Saleemul Huq, Leon Simons, Sir David Anthony King, The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory, BioScience, 2023;, biad080, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad080