Code Red

“Skies turned hazy from Pittsburgh to Washington to Boston, as smoke from fires in Canada poured into the U.S. Northeast.”

— NASA EarthObservatory — July 21, 2021

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If you are an avid watcher of TV news or regularly read a daily newspaper, you still may have missed the headlines describing the dangerous future our children and grandchildren are inheriting … from us:

The U.N.’s dire climate report confirms: We’re out of time. — Washington Post, 8/10/21

 

Eugene Robinson pulled his attention away from the other headlines distracting us at this crucial moment — an assortment of disappointments and debacles here and there — to convey some very bad news:

We’re out of time. It’s as simple as that.

If the world immediately takes bold, coordinated action to curb climate change, we face a future of punishing heat waves, deadly wildfires and devastating floods — and that’s the optimistic scenario, according to an alarming new U.N. report. If, on the other hand, we continue down the road of half-measures and denial that we’ve been stuck on since scientists first raised the alarm, the hellscape we leave to our grandchildren will be unrecognizable.

You don’t have to imagine how unrecognizable this world is fast becoming. The climate crisis is happening to us and our children at this very minute, says climate scientists Katherine Hayhoe and Friederike Otto:

Hotter, faster, stronger: That isn’t a tagline for the next blockbuster superhero movie. This is what climate change is doing to many extreme weather events. As the planet warms, heat waves are getting hotter, wildfires are moving faster and burning larger areas, and storms and floods are becoming stronger.

These effects are no longer a future or distant concern: They are affecting us — all of us — here and now.

 

The new report from the International Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C) — the global organization that speaks authoritatively on such matters — highlights the existential consequences for the health and safety of me, you, our children… everyone. As one might expect, it got United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’s attention. But did it get yours?

“Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity.  The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable:  greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.  Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”

 

The report is part of the 6th cycle of reports from the IPCC that first warned of the threat of climate change more than 30 years ago. What is most striking is that few of the bombshell conclusions from the most recent report are actually new. In fact, IPCC reports have been remarkably consistent over the decades. None of the conclusions are especially complex or terribly difficult to comprehend and accept as today’s reality. However, the more scientists learn about the planet’s climate system and the requirements necessary for keeping the miracle of life on Earth going, the louder the alarm sounds.

Reading the new IPCC report reminds us of the 10 simple words we used to describe the climate crisis on The PediaBlog more than four years ago. Considering 234 authors from 65 countries contributed to this new report, we can safely acknowledge the consensus that experts agree:

“Recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid, and intensifying, and unprecedented in thousands of years.”

 

It’s real (it’s not a hoax, not even close):

“Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth, in multiple ways.

“The changes we experience will increase with further warming.”

 

It’s us (extracting and burning fossil fuels, mistreating the land and oceans, using the atmosphere as an open sewer, and not taking responsibility and effective action with the knowledge and skills humans already have to limit the damage):

“It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change, making extreme climate events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall, and droughts, more frequent and severe.”

 

It’s bad (and getting worse):

“Unless there are immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach.“

 

There’s hope (although, the window to change is closing fast):

“To limit global warming, strong, rapid, and sustained reductions in CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases are necessary.

“This would not only reduce the consequences of climate change but also improve air quality.”

 

Professor Hayhoe captures the urgency of our predicament:

These latest IPCC conclusions couldn’t speak any louder. It’s clear we’re all in the same boat – facing a challenge that will affect every one of us within our lifetimes, not to mention future generations and most other life on Earth. The need to act collectively and decisively has never been more urgent.

 

Humanity (that’s you and me, and our children too) is in serious trouble. Everyone knows it, except for the contrarians, cynics, and deniers, who you can bet your last dollar, have never in their lives read a peer-reviewed scientific climate study. Even the fossil fuel industry — the all-time champion emitters of greenhouse gases — have known for more than a half-century how their business was leading the earth into an ecological disaster, and humanity toward catastrophe. Schoolchildren were taught about what was in store for them as early as 1958 (watch this famous educational video, beginning at the 50:00 mark. Ring any bells?). Three decades later, on a hot June day in Washington, DC, a climate scientist named James Hansen testified to Congress and the rest of America about what his data was showing:

“Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is already large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. … It is changing our climate now.”

 

That was 33 years ago. Since then, humans have extracted and burned more than half of all the fossil fuels ever burned, emitting more than half of all the greenhouse gases ever emitted. We knew what would happen and yet we did it anyway!

It’s no wonder that today all over the world, young people are feeling discouraged if not altogether hopeless. If it’s not obvious why they think their parents have failed them, we’ll explain it on Thursday on The PediaBlog.

 

Gaining knowledge about climate change can be like drinking water from a fire hose. To  begin, you’ve got to find credible, evidence-based sources of information. You can start by heading over to Katherine Hayhoe’s “Global Weirding” YouTube channel here to watch some really well-produced, family-friendly short videos.

 

*Dr. Ketyer is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change, and a member of the Climate Reality Project Leadership Training Corps.

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/08/24/code-red/