Earth is on track to face devastating consequences of climate change – extreme drought, food shortages and deadly flooding – unless there’s an “unprecedented” effort made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a new United Nations report warns.
The planet’s surface has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius – or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit – and could see a catastrophic 1.5 C — 2.7 F — increase between 2030 and 2052, scientists say.
“This is concerning because we know there are so many more problems if we exceed 1.5 degrees C global warming, including more heat waves and hot summers, greater sea level rise, and, for many parts of the world, worse droughts and rainfall extremes,” Andrew King, a climate science academic at the University of Melbourne, said in a statement to CNN.
The stunning statistics were released Monday in a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned that we must take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” in order to save our planet.
Scientists with the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC said in order to have even a 50-50 chance of staying under the 1.5 degree cap, the world must become “carbon neutral” by 2050. Any additional carbon dioxide emissions would require removing the harmful gas from the air.
If nothing is done, Earth can expect heat wave temperatures to rise by 3 degrees Celsius, more frequent or extreme droughts, an increase in deadly hurricanes and as much as 90 percent of coral reefs dying off — including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, according to the report.
Countries in the southern hemisphere would see the most drastic effects.
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:: already warmed by 1 degree Celsius – or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit ::
Math is hard. Metric math makes you stoopit.