Hi. So we've got a massive new climate report, hot off the presses.
If you're bracing yourself for some catastrophic news, well, that's
kind of the good news. There's nothing new in this report.
There's no new bombshells that we didn't already know.
We expected this, all of this.
We're seeing the effects of climate change already.
And this report just confirms what our research
and experience has told us is happening.
What we've got is several thousand pages of research compiled
by hundreds of scientists that tells us exactly what
the earth's climate looks like right now and what the future might hold.
And well, it isn't really an optimistic read, but it does represent an impressive
collaborative project amongst the 195 countries that are members
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And it creates one definitive place to go to for an up to date comprehensive
understanding of the climate crisis.
So far, we've only got the section about the physical science basis.
The next two chunks
that report on the human impacts and how to respond are coming in 2022.
So what's even in this thing?
Well, I spent my weekend reading through all the jargon and here are my highlights.
For starters, the IPCC is using definitive language.
In the Summary for Policymakers, the shorter, easier to read
summary of the report, which importantly is approved line by line
by the 195 governments in that intergovernmental part of their moniker.
Use words like unequivocal a bunch, as in it is unequivocal
that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,
or observed increases in well, mixed greenhouse gas
concentrations are unequivocally caused by human activities.
This is a big deal because normally the IPCC sticks
to more cautious language like medium or high confidence,
which is still their primary way of expressing uncertainty.
But where the science is definitive, they're letting it be definitive.
Climate change is human caused and is having a tremendous impact.
This obviously isn't new information, but it does mean that governments
from the United States to Russia
to Micronesia to Libya have all signed off on an agreed set of facts
relating to the climate crisis, who caused it and how bad it is.
And that's kind of a theme of this report. There isn't any new science here.
It is just a roundup of everything we know right now, or more accurately,
everything in the scientific literature published before January 31st, 2021.
For example, we know each decade since the 1980s has been warmer than the last.
And as a result, global surface temperature has risen
a little more than one degree Celsius since 1850 because of human activities.
Burning fossil fuels.
We also know that all of this human caused
climate change is messing with the water cycle,
changing rainfall patterns, storm tracks and even the saltiness of the ocean.
There is no place on earth that is free of these impacts.
Every region of the planet is already experiencing
and will increasingly experience climatic changes.
What are those changes look like?
Decreases in permafrost, snow, glaciers, ice sheets, lake and arctic
sea ice increases in extreme heat.
Events that can impact everything from agriculture to human health,
intensification of tropical cyclones and extra tropical storms,
river floods, fire weather, increased overall rainfall and increased dryness.
Not to mention as more people continue
move into cities and cities and urban infrastructure get larger,
the severity of heat
events, extreme rainfall and flooding increases in those places.
All of which means that the melting of permafrost and erosion
of land into the sea, threatening homes in Alaska, the extreme heat in the U.S.
Northwest and Pakistan's Indus Valley this summer.
Supercharged cyclones like Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and droughts like those
in the US, Southwest
and Madagascar are more than likely going to increase in severity and frequency.
Of course, these are physical changes in the atmosphere and oceans.
How these physical changes in the earth's systems impact people,
how governments choose
to respond to these events and who and where gets protection.
That's a decision.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
How and where these impacts are most likely to occur is regional.
While the global average temperature is increasing, the weirdness
and bumpiness of the planet mean different areas
aren't all experiencing climate change the same way.
Helpfully, along with this report, the IPCC also released a website
where you can explore the projections for where you live,
if you like, pretty graphs that make you cry. This site is for you.
Plus, you can download that sweet, sweet, raw data.
Probably the scariest sentence in the Summary for Policymakers to me
is, "if global warming increases some compound, extreme events
with low likelihood in past and current climate will become more frequent
and there will be higher likelihood that events
with increased intensities, durations
and or spatial extents unprecedented in the observational record will occur."
Now, perhaps that word salad does not inspire deep fear in your soul,
but breaking things down a bit.
So a compound extreme is the jargony way of making the nightmare scenario of two
or more hazards happening at the same time or one after another
not sound horrifying.
So, for example,
a heatwave happening in a region already dealing with a drought or a wildfire
followed by a massive storm or a wicked cold snap right after a flood.
By definition, these extremes are extreme.
They're rare. So what they're basically saying
here is these dangerous, rare events.
Well, they're not going to be so rare anymore.
And while one extreme event can already stress many places'
emergency management systems, resources and response, adding another one on top of
that can be devastating.
It's a bit of a one plus one equals way more than two
in terms of how we're able to prepare and respond.
What this report makes really clear,
there is a big difference between if temperatures rise by one point
five or two degrees and everything beyond. The expected impacts
and effects of warming only get worse as the thermometer creeps upward.
For example, right now, extreme heat events occur nearly 5
times as often as they did historically with 1.5 degrees rise
we're looking at 9 times as often and at 2 degrees, 14 times as often.
This is the same story
for fire weather to droughts to heavy rainstorms and flooding.
Reading this report is basically a lot of bad news all in one place.
We're seeing confirmation of the relationships
between the dreadful fire seasons,
massive flooding, horrifying cyclones and widespread rapid climate change.
And the IPCC has laid it all out for the world to see.
But physical climate impacts are not a guarantee of the apocalyptic end times.
We know how to respond to environmental hazards.
Floods and storms and heat and fire are not new.
They're coming more often and they're supercharged and they're intense.
But over the last hundred
or so thousand years that people have been roaming around on this rock,
we've developed the skills and tools and expertise to protect one another.
We also know what we need to do to reduce emissions.
While this report outlines that there is only an inside chance
in the future scenarios that keep the globe below
1.5 degrees by the end of the century, it is still possible.
We just need the changes right now, not in 10 or 5 years, but right now.
Every fraction of a degree of warming avoided.
Every push for cleaner air
and water will reduce the number of people and places impacted.
If you've heard the alarm the IPCC has sounded and activists
have been ringing for decades, I encourage you to get involved.
This report has nothing in it about solutions, the impacts
and vulnerability and mitigation
and adaptation reports aren't coming out until 2022.
This report and the news around it are a lot.
It is hard to hear and read about these objectively disaster scenarios,
but we've got a set of facts, we've got piles of data,
and we have the knowledge to deal with this mess.
And one of those tools can be this report.
I encourage you to send the Summary
for Policymakers to your government representative.
Chances are you live in one of the 195 countries that signed off on it.
Let your rep know and ask,
what are they going to do with this information in your community?
You also hop on over to the Atlas and take a look at what
the current and future climate impacts will look like in your region.
Do the models suggest future drought?
Take that information to your community board, town halls, or governors, or
join a local environmental organization and explore the data together.
How can you use the knowledge in this report to start building
solutions where you live?
And if the news around this report is feeling really overwhelming,
I've left a few links about dealing with climate despair downstairs, too.
Thanks for watching.