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The world is warming up.
As we burn up the planet’s coal, oil and gas reserves, and cut down its remaining forests, greenhouse gases are pouring into the atmosphere.
The delicate balance of atmospheric gases that sustains life is thickening, trapping more and more heat and irreversibly changing our world.
The causes
More than 70 percent of China's energy needs come from burning coal.
Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
Other sources of greenhouse pollution include the transport and construction sector (carbon dioxide), agriculture (methane), white goods (fridges and air conditioners emit F-gases, very potent greenhouse gases) and deforestation (carbon dioxide).
The science
This massive and rapid change to our climate is like nothing humankind has seen before.
As such, the science around it has been cautious and careful in reaching consensus over time.
But a strong consensus on climate change is here; the scientific community now agrees that climate change is real, it’s caused by human activity and it’s already happening.
| The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up by the
United Nations in 1988 to investigate human-induced climate change. About 1,000 experts from around the
world are involved in drafting, revising and finalizing IPCC reports. Thus,
the IPCC represents a global consensus of the world's climate change
experts. From the IPCC's most recent scientific assessment: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." |
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The impacts
The 0.6 degree rise we’ve experienced already kills 150,000 people every year.
Glaciers, permafrost and sea ice are disappearing. Sea levels are rising, seasons changing and extreme weather is becoming more extreme.
As temperatures increase further, there will almost inevitably be more flooding, more drought, more disease, more famine and more war, creating hundreds of millions of refugees and causing the destruction of entire ecosystems and species.
How much climate change can we bear?
An average temperature rise of around 1.3 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels is already inevitable and will bring with it some terrible impacts worldwide.
If that figure hits two degrees, many scientists say that not only will the impacts be much greater, but the probability of feedback mechanisms kicking in will be much higher; climate change could spiral completely out of control.
Some studies say we have 10 years or less to tackle emissions if we are to stay below that temperature threshold.
