UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, A new flagship UN report on climate change out Monday indicating that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned, with scientists arguing that it’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. His comments reflected the IPCC’s insistence that all countries must reduce their fossil fuel use substantially, extend access to electricity, improve energy efficiency and increase the use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen. Unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water, Mr. Guterres said in a video message, which also forecast “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals”. Horror story.....The UN chief added: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (Celsius, or 2.7-degrees Fahrenheit) limit” that was agreed in Paris in 2015. Providing the scientific proof to back up that damning assessment, the IPCC report – written by hundreds of leading scientists and agreed by 195 countries - noted that greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity, have increased since 2010 “across all major sectors globally”. In an op-ed article penned for the Washington Post, Mr. Guterres described the latest IPCC report as "a litany of broken climate promises", which revealed a "yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality." He wrote that high-emitting governments and corporations, were not just turning a blind eye, "they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects."Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Secretary-Generalinsisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable      https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1115452

Although the debate is far from settled, it appears ancient humans took thousands of years to wipe out species in a way modern humans would do in decades. Fast forward to today and we are not just killing megafauna but destroying whole landscapes, often in just a few years. Farming is the primary driver of destruction and, of all mammals on Earth, 96% are either livestock or humans. The UN estimates as many as one million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction.After the spread of farming and significant population increases, it was European expansion that would be the next big blow to the planet’s biodiversity. While Indigenous peoples across the world lived mostly within the limits set by nature, recognising their dependency on it and protecting it, while hunting to survive, all that was about to change. Spanish explorers and settlers arrived in central and southern America in the 15th and 16th centuries. In The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, Maslin and Prof Simon Lewis, also from UCL, describe maps of that time showing large tracts of lands with not much on them. These places already had names, but the Europeans claimed them for themselves. “Religion and notions of the superiority of Europeans loomed large as justifiers of both the conquest of land and the names themselves. Their arrival also heralded the displacement, persecution and killing of Indigenous peoples. Researchers from UCL, including Maslin and Lewis, found the European colonisation of the Americas caused the death of 56 million people by 1600 – 90% of the Indigenous population. Today, Indigenous people make up just 6% of the world’s population but protect 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. European scientists’ interest in the diversity of life peaked in the Victorian era. Great natural history museums are testament to this excitement of discovery – they wanted to show off the exotic animals and plants collected from all over the British empire to the public at home. For the first time, they began to understand the immense diversity of the natural world and that humans were destroying it.                   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/25/cop15-humans-v-nature-our-long-and-destructive-journey-to-the-age-of-extinction-aoe

The devastating intensification of extreme weather is laid bare today in a Guardian analysis that shows how people across the world are losing their lives and livelihoods due to more deadly and more frequent heatwaves, floods, wildfires and droughts brought by the climate crisis. The analysis of hundreds of scientific studies – the most comprehensive compilation to date – demonstrates beyond any doubt how humanity’s vast carbon emissions are forcing the climate to disastrous new extremes. At least a dozen of the most serious events, from killer heatwaves to broiling seas, would have been all but impossible without human-caused global heating, the analysis found.Most worryingly, all this is happening with a rise of just 1C in the planet’s average temperature. The role of global heating in supercharging extreme weather is happening at “astonishing speed”, scientists say. “The world is changing fast and it’s already hurting us – that is the blunt summary,” said Prof Maarten van Aalst, the director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. The world is currently on track for a rise of at least 2.5C. Based on what we have experienced so far, that would deliver death and destruction far greater than already suffered. The climate information website Carbon Brief compiled a new database of attribution studies of more than 500 events – every such study available – and shared it exclusively with the Guardian. The analysis of the database and interviews with the world’s leading attribution scientists shows beyond any doubt that we are already deep into the era of climate death and destruction. The key findings.......read more            https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/04/climate-breakdown-supercharging-extreme-weather                              ......and.....                   The climate crisis is the prime suspect for the devastating scale of flooding in Pakistan, which has killed more than 1,000 people and affected 30 million. But the catastrophe, still unfolding, is most likely the result of a lethal combination of factors including the vulnerability of poor citizens, steep mountainous slopes in some regions, the unexpected destruction of embankments and dams, and some natural climate variation. The horrific scale of the floods are not in doubt. “We are witnessing the worst flooding in the history of the country,” said Dr Fahad Saeed, a climate scientist with the Climate Analytics group, who is based in Islamabad. The obvious cause is the record-breaking rainfall. “Pakistan has never seen an unbroken cycle of monsoon [rains] like this,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister. “Eight weeks of non-stop torrents have left huge swathes of the country underwater. This is a deluge from all sides.” She said the “monster monsoon was wreaking non-stop havoc throughout the country”. From the beginning of the month, the rainfall was nine times higher than average in Sindh province and five times higher across the whole of Pakistan. Basic physics is the reason rainfall is becoming intense around the world – warmer air holds more moisture. Scientists are already trying to determine the extent to which global heating is to blame for the rainfall and floods. But analysis of the previous worst flood in 2010 suggests it will be significant. The “superflood” was made more likely by global heating, which drove fiercer rains.         https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/29/monster-monsoon-why-the-floods-in-pakistan-are-so-devastating?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20220830&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily

Time to Get Real on Climate Change......Despite decades of studies and climate summits, greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. Energy scientist Vaclav Smil says it’s time to stop ricocheting between apocalyptic forecasts and rosy models of rapid CO2 cuts and focus on the difficult task of remaking our energy system.Today at Yale Environment 360, energy analyst Vaclav Smilarguesthat it’s time to stop focusing on apocalyptic forecasts or rosy models of rapid CO2 cuts and instead double down on the difficult task of remaking the world’s energy system. Smil, a University of Manitoba professor known for his outspokenness, notes that despite three decades of studies and climate summits, greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. The problem, he writes, is that rather than taking a clear-eyed look at the enormous challenges of phasing out fossil fuels, “we have ricocheted between catastrophism on one hand and the magical thinking of ‘techno-optimism’ on the other.” The data are clear: Between 1989 and 2019, we increased global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by about 67 percent. Affluent countries like the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and those in the European Union — whose per capita energy use was very high three decades ago — did reduce their emissions, but only by about 4 percent. Meanwhile, Indian greenhouse gas emissions increased 4.3 times, and Chinese emissions rose about 4.8 times. Atmospheric CO2 levels, which for centuries fluctuated narrowly at close to 270 parts per million (ppm), rose in the summer of 2020 to above 420 ppm, more than a 50 percent increase over the late 18th-century level. Regrettably, we have largely ignored taking steps to limit the long-term impacts of climate change. Clearly, to conclude that we will be able to achieve decarbonization anytime soon, effectively, and on the required scale runs against all past evidence.And as if that were not enough, we have deliberately introduced and promoted the diffusion of new products and energy conversions that have boosted the consumption of fossil energies and hence further intensified CO2 emissions.