The worldwide “business as usual” approach to the ongoing problem of climate change has gotten our planet’s “vital signs” to reach record-breaking levels of deterioration, an influential team of scientists reported last Wednesday. They warned that we are about to face substantial imminent climate tipping points.
The researchers, members of a group of over 14,000 scientists who have passed on an initiative to declare a worldwide state of climate emergency, as governments kept on failing to solve the problem of climate change, which is believed to originate from “the overexploitation of the Earth.”
A similar statement was made in 2019, when the scientists spoke of an “unprecedented surge” in climate-related problems, including the floodings in Southeast Asia and South America.
Out of the 31 parameters known as “vital signs” – key data of planetary health, including greenhouse gas emissions, sea-ice extent, glacier thickness and others, a total of 18 hit record highs or lows were found is more than half of the total analyzed parameters.
One particular example is the decrease in population numbers, which surprisingly didn’t impact CO2 and methane emissions, which reached all-time highs this year.
Antarctica and Greenland both registered all-time low levels of ice mass, and advanced analysis revealed that glaciers are melting over 30% quicker than they did one and a half decades ago, according to the study’s authors.
Global sea levels also reached new high levels since 2019, and the Brazillian Amazon loss reached a 12-year high last year.
Tim Lenton, the director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and a co-author of the study, said:
“We need to respond to the evidence that we are hitting climate tipping points with equally urgent action to decarbonize the global economy and start restoring instead of destroying nature,”
