30 Years Ago This Week, We Were Warned Of The Climate Future Awaiting Us; We Burned Those Decades

[hatrack]

Thirty years ago this week, the population of Earth was given official notification that it faced a threat of unprecedented magnitude. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, spewed into the atmosphere from factories and vehicles burning fossil fuels, were pinpointed, definitively, as triggers of future climate change. Melting icecaps, rising sea levels and increasing numbers of extreme weather events would be the norm for the 21st century unless action were taken, warned the authors of the first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists had been charged by the IPCC, which had been set up two years earlier, with establishing whether climate change was a real prospect and, if it was, to look at the main drivers of that threat. They concluded, in a report released in August 1990, that the menace was real and that coal, gas and oil would be the principal causes of global heating. Unless controls were imposed on their consumption, temperature rises of 0.3C a decade would be occurring in the 21st century, bringing havoc in their wake.

Three decades later, it is clear that we have recklessly ignored that warning. Fossil fuels still supply 80% of the world’s energy, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to rise and global temperatures are still increasing. According to Met Office statistics, there was a 0.14C increase in global temperatures in the decade that followed publication of the first assessment report. This was then followed by a 0.2C increase in each of the following two decades. The world could easily heat by 3C by the end of the century at this rate, warn scientists.

The impact on the world will, by then, be catastrophic. As the Observer reveals this week, our overheating planet has already lost a staggering 28tn tonnes of ice from its ice sheets and glaciers, triggering sea level rises that are now accelerating at a rate that matches the worst-case scenario predictions of the IPCC.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/23/the-observer-view-on-the-climate-catastrophe-facing-earth

[abqtommy]

1. This is the telling quote from the original op: "...we have recklessly ignored that warning."

I'm part of the "we" and so are you. It's another failure but will it be the last one? Time will tell...

[DSandra]

2. Corporations control the world and have effectively veto power

Because of money in politics. And the Oil Industry has been one of the most aggressive industries in the corporate world.

[k2qb3]

3. Americans in particular have been systematically lied to for those three decades...

Actually longer than that, but I think the real propaganda war kicked in around '88 and ramped up after the IPCC.

It's been remarkably effective, even among people who aren't deniers. It's significantly watered down the language of the warnings we've gotten and delayed action. The actions that have been taken have also been severely compromised by various agendas and profit motives.