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Earth

UN Climate Report: 'Atlas of Human Suffering' Worse, Bigger 116

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an "unavoidable" increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says. And after that watch out. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday if human-caused global warming isn't limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being "potentially irreversible."

Today's children who may still be alive in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than they do now even with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today's heat. But if temperatures increase nearly 2 more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) they would feel five times the floods, storms, drought and heat waves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC. Already at least 3.3 billion people's daily lives "are highly vulnerable to climate change" and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says. Large numbers of people are being displaced by worsening weather extremes. And the world's poor are being hit by far the hardest, it says.

More people are going to die each year from heat waves, diseases, extreme weather, air pollution and starvation because of global warming, the report says. Just how many people die depends on how much heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas gets spewed into the air and how the world adapts to an ever-hotter world, scientists say. The report lists mounting dangers to people, plants, animals, ecosystems and economies, with people at risk in the millions and billions and potential damages in the trillions of dollars. The report highlights people being displaced from homes, places becoming uninhabitable, the number of species dwindling, coral disappearing, ice shrinking and rising and increasingly oxygen-depleted and acidic oceans. Some of these risks can still be prevented or lessened with prompt action.
"Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change."
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UN Climate Report: 'Atlas of Human Suffering' Worse, Bigger

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  • IPCC: ‘Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World’s Wealth’

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Developed nations profited greatly from emitting vast amounts of CO2. Now they are telling developing nations that they can't do the same thing, they have to keep emissions down because the climate is already buggered.

      Obviously that is never going to fly unless the developed nations commit to not only reducing their own emissions, but to helping the developing ones do likewise, and helping them cope with the climate change that developed nations largely caused.

      If you want to call it redistribution of wealth

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        LOL - If those developing cultures were any more deserving of the natural resources we exploited and profited from they would advanced, done the same and got their share. Its really that simple, 'we' got there first so to damn bad.

        Its also true that a lot of them have way more to lose from climate change than 'we' do. Honestly they should be GREATFUL 'we' are even addressing our own emissions and not sending them the bill to do it. Let alone expecting us to help them.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          If you take that attitude then the world is fucked, including your country. If the climate change doesn't get you the resource wars will.

        • At previous points in history parts of the world other than Western Europe, Japan and North America were the most advanced. So if they had screwed up the global environment, you'd have been fine with it?
  • These are first-world problems for retired politicians in order to travel all over the world for conferences on climate change.

  • by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday February 28, 2022 @11:15PM (#62314055)

    As all my fellow Slashdot armchair climatologists know, there is no need to worry about these alarmist reports.

    It's always consistently cool and comfortable in our moms' basements, and in fact, this supposed "outside temperature" doesn't even exist.

    • One good nuclear exchange of NATO with either Russia or China and you'll forget all about what fossil fuel can do to climate, it's peanuts.

      • One âoegoodâ exchange? I donâ(TM)t think we need any particular order of magnitude to notice how awful that would be

        • but the orders of magnitude make a difference if the exchange makes dent in climate and environment. One or a few no. Couple tens of weapons, no. Hundreds or more from each side, yes.

  • And in the real world life continues to get better for the vast majority of humanity.

    https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24... [vox.com]

    Let me know if there is any change. TIA
    • None of this is relevant.

      Not sure what your point is here?

      • Point is life is getting better, not worse, for the vast majority of the world's people.

        Inconvenient for the end of the world narrative, I know.
  • I'm not even going to consider panicing unless they come up with OVER 9000 ways.

    PS The shortage isn't toilet paper this time, but plastic and cardboard.

  • Hmm.... seems like someone must have asked that once or twice before?

    Yeah, no good sensationalist fear-mongering could go without the "kids" angle.

    Thing is? Humanity has never been static, failing to come up with any new solutions for pressing problems. I see no reason to believe this climate challenge would be the one unique time in history that things were different?

    I'd say that as just one example, a kid still alive in 2100 would be WELL past the current guesses that Space-X is making about how long befo

  • In early 2007, I read a press release announcing the release of the Summary for Policymakers preceding the completion of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. In the press release, it stated that this Summary was being released before the actual Assessment report was complete.

    And then it added:

    "If upon completion, the Fourth Assessment Report disagrees with the statements in this Summary for Policymakers, the Fourth Assessment Report will be modified to align it with this Summary For Policymakers."

    And
    • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      Yawn.

    • I call bullshit. There's half a dozen [www.ipcc.ch] related press releases on the IPCC site, and none of them say any such thing. Feel free to link to such a statement, if you can find one.

      Still, if you are truly willing to dismiss "anything scientists have to say" on such a thin pretext then I can well imagine you believing whatever malicious misinterpretation you got fed. Tell me, do you genuinely dismiss everything any scientist says, on every subject - or does it depend on their results?

    • "Trust me - I once saw a statement by the IPCC where they said the science would be changed after the fact to match a political narrative agreed on in advance"

  • They have only collected good weather data for aprox 100 years.
    The 1930's had some very hot years, all of them have been edited and revised way down.
    They only collected it in a few places.

    They estimate / simulate the data for a bunch more.

    They do get some valuable data from ice cores & tree ring.

    The satellite era has produced some nice data, mapping the ice formations & temp.

    But when they write a report or model the climate, the data is restricted to a time period that produces a chart that supports

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

      The 1930's had some very hot years,

      In the USA, not really anywhere else. The USA is not the whole world.

  • Wow, this is new. A report on how if we don't lower CO2 emissions now that our children could grow up in some purgatory. Well, thanks to NATO nations closing their nuclear power plants while we buy Russian natural gas and Chinese solar panels we have cities in Ukraine on fire, and NATO gives them band-aids and helmets.

    Can we build more nuclear power plants now?

    While Europe was closing perfectly safe, and paid for, nuclear power plants we saw Russia and China build nuclear power plants. They paid for thos

    • TLDR; version: I'll start believing what they're saying when they start acting like they believe it themselves. Sounds about right.

  • See a conservative? Bash a conservative.
    • Label someone the enemy. Attack them relentlessly without provocation. IOW, you are Putinesque. Not a good fragrance.

      Not mentioned enough is Putin listed rejecting communism as one of the reasons for attacking the Ukraine. Now comes all the commutards wanting to talk about how great communism will be when someone finally figures out how to implement it without it turning into a dictatorship.

  • For all you idiot comentards. Your 3 hardest years of your upbringing were fifth class. Definitely failed science for your whole school education.
    We just had a years rain in a few days. Many river systems along the east coast just had their biggest floods, not just highest in 100 year but 1000 year.
    Dams at 200% capacity. The weather system is now heading for Sydney. It is getting worse quicker than scientists anticipated.
    If you didn't have your head up your ass or hadn't yet popped out of Mum's twat you mig

    • Most of the comments here so far are from people who are not real skeptics, but who distort the facts to fit their own "anti-global warming" narrative, without any concern for the search for truth.

      It's very scary to see that coming from a reasonably well educated, science-friendly user base.

      • People have chosen their ideology and now ignore any and all proof that contradicts it. The information age is ushering in a new dark age due to confirmation bias and echo chambers. Reminds me of that scene in Platoon when Charlie is "in the wire" and the commander says "Dump all your bombs on our location" then hunkers down a says "Nice knowing you". That's where I feel like we are headed.
  • What do they think that the maximum number of humans should be? Do we need to get rid of 4, or is it 5, billion people in the next ten years?

  • Sorry, but that is an irrefutable fact. Practically none of the climate change predictions over the last 40 years have panned out.
    It is getting more difficult for me to believe these predictions are credible.

  • "The end of the world is here! Women and minorities hardest hit!" :D

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