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Nations have delayed their fossil fuel emissions so long that they will no longer be able to stop the intensification of global warming in the next 30 years, but there is still a short window to prevent the saddest future. major new United Nations scientific report has concluded.
Humans have heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the results can be felt all over the world: This summer alone, surging heat wave Hundreds of people killed, floods devastated in the United States and Canada Germany and ChineseForest fires in Siberia, Turkey and Greece are out of control.
But that’s just the beginning, according to a report released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of scientists brought together by the United Nations. Even as nations begin to cut emissions sharply today, overall global warming is likely to increase by around 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next two decades, a warmer future that is currently essentially locked up.
At 1.5 degrees of warming, scientists we found, the dangers grow significantly. Around 1 billion people worldwide may be overwhelmed by more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions of people will struggle for water due to more severe droughts. Some animal and plant species living today will disappear. Coral reefs, which fish large parts of the world, will suffer more frequent mass extinctions.
“We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather conditions in the next 20 or 30 years,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds and one of the hundreds of international experts who helped write the report. “Things will unfortunately be worse than they are today.”
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