• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Past emissions cause mounting climate havoc

March 25, 2016
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Alex Kirby

 

Despite signs that the world will cut its future fossil fuel use, greenhouse gases already emitted are still driving accelerating climate change.

LONDON, 25 March, 2016 – Climate change has reached the point where it may outstrip the quickening efforts to slow it by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, scientists say.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

They say humans are now releasing CO2 into the atmosphere 10 times faster than natural processes have ever done in the last 66 million years, before the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The disclosure comes in the World Meteorological Organisation’s State of the Climate report, published in the journal Nature Geoscience. 

The lead author, Professor Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii, said: “Our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time period [and] means that we have effectively entered a ‘no-analogue’ state.

“The present and future rate of climate change and ocean acidification is too fast for many species to adapt, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions.”

“The window of opportunity for limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C . . . is narrow and rapidly shrinking. The effects of a warming planet will be felt by all”

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Climate change is accelerating at an alarming rate. The window of opportunity for limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C – the threshold agreed by world governments in Paris in December last year – is narrow and rapidly shrinking. The effects of a warming planet will be felt by all.”

The WMO secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said the present “alarming” rate of climate change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions was “unprecedented in modern records”. “The future is now”, he said.

Yet less than a week ago the International Energy Agency announced that global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide had shown no increase for the second year in a row. The announcement was widely hailed as significant good news, with the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, describing it as “yet another boost to the global fight against climate change”.

Advocates of a low- or no-carbon economy have been encouraged by other evidence that the world has begun in earnest to switch away from fossil fuels and the greenhouse emissions which they cause.

They point to the Paris Agreement itself, to the rapidly falling price of solar energy and other renewable sources, and to the shrinking market for coal, the most polluting of the fossil fuels.

Damage inevitable

But the WMO report spells out starkly one inescapable reality. The world may now be intent on cutting future greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent climate change reaching levels beyond human ability to affect. But the emissions which have already reached the biosphere are long-lived, and they may persist long enough to damage the natural world irreversibly, no matter what we do now.

The WMO’s evidence suggests that massive damage is indeed inevitable. Among its findings are:

  • 2015 was the hottest year on record, because of long-term climate change and a strong El Niño;  
  • devastating heatwaves were widespread and sea levels were the highest recorded;
  • more than 11 months’ rain fell in one day in Libya, and more than 13 months’ worth in a single hour in the Moroccan city of Marrakech.

The world can slow or possibly even stop future greenhouse gas emissions. It has to live with the consequences of those that are already in the atmosphere and the oceans. On the WMO’s evidence, that may be the harder part. – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
27

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.3k
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 30, 2023
574
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
479
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
105
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
290
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
321

Recent Posts

Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
298
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
104
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
49

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
82
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
513

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
228
Next Post

Asia loses its appetite for coal

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}