Scientists warn: Planet Earth is burning

Forest fires in Greece.

From the source

Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued a "red" warning of what will happen on Earth due to climate change. The report stated that heat waves and heavy rains that cause floods have become more intense and frequent since the 1950s in most parts of the world, and climate change is now affecting all populated areas on the planet. Drought is increasing in many places, and the numbers of major hurricanes and cyclones since the 1970s are likely to have increased by more than 66%. "If there is still a need to prove that climate change is caused by human activities, then this is another proof of that," says University of East Anglia professor Corinne Le Quere.

"Our future climate could become a kind of hell on Earth," says Oxford University professor Tim Palmer.

Or, as Professor Dave Ray, executive director of the University of Edinburgh's Climate Change Institute, puts it: "This is not just another scientific report. It's hell."

To be sure, the figures presented in the report are strikingly stark and emphatic, compared to the earlier, and much more cautious, readings of the IPCC.

As it turns out, humans have pumped about 2,400 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since 1850, creating concentrations of the gas not seen on Earth over the past two million years.

The consequences of massive human intervention in the atmosphere are now clear: what's hot today will get hotter tomorrow, severe flooding will become more frequent, wildfires more dangerous, and deadly droughts will occur on a larger scale.

In short, things could get worse.

Indeed, by the end of the century, these phenomena could become even more threatening to civilization if emissions continue at their current rates.

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