January 11, 2021

By Ramona du Houx

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change  warned existing carbon pollution will cause global temperatures to rise about 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels—with devastating consequences worldwide.

In 2020, 11,000 scientists from 153 countries came together to declare a climate emergency based on their report titled World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency. The same researchers now say an urgent massive-scale mobilization is necessary to address the human-caused global crisis. The findings that led to their conclusions in The Climate Emergency: 2020 in Review, were published in Scientific American on January 6.

These scientists have declared that the climate emergency has arrived and is accelerating more rapidly than most researchers anticipated. Every effort must be made to reduce emissions and increase removals of atmospheric carbon in order to restore the melting Arctic and end the deadly cycle of damage that the current climate is delivering.

 Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points.

They have come up with six steps for solutions. They include, Government subsidies for renewable energy technologies to get off of fossil fuels, to cut back methane emissions and black carbon, restore natural habitats, regenerative agriculture and no food waste, our consumption economy needs to change to respect the natural world, and the world’s population needs to decrease.

The scientists say adverse effects of climate change are much more severe than expected, and now threaten both the biosphere and humanity.