[D66] Lack of action on climate change leads to warmest decade ever recorded

[A.OUT]

wsws.org:

Lack of action on climate change leads to warmest decade ever recorded
20 January 2020

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the US space agency NASA 
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have all 
independently concluded that the past decade, 2010 to 2019, experienced 
the hottest ever recorded global surface temperatures. Each decade since 
the 1960s has been hotter than the previous one.

The five years, 2015–2019, were the warmest. 2019 was the second hottest 
year—surpassed only by 2016, when the El Niño weather pattern drove 
temperatures to the highest level yet registered. The average surface 
temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial 
era, while the oceans, which absorb most of the heat, are warming even 
faster. Among credible scientists, there is no dispute that the cause is 
the long-term impact of human emissions of carbon dioxide and other 
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas commented: “The year 2020 has 
started out where 2019 left off—with high impact weather and 
climate-related events. Australia had its hottest, driest year on record 
in 2019, setting the scene for the massive bushfires, which were so 
devastating to people and property, wildlife, ecosystems and the 
environment. Unfortunately, we expect to see much more extreme weather 
throughout 2020 and the coming decades, fueled by record levels of 
heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are suffering the impact 
of human-induced climatic change. In 2019 alone, scientists believe that 
global warming was the main contributing factor to more intense heat 
waves, droughts and fire, more regular and severe tropical storms and 
flooding, increased acidification of oceans, accelerated permafrost 
melt, the thinning of ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica, and the 
steady rise in sea levels.

What action is required to stem global warming is well known. Emissions 
must be drastically reduced through the wholesale deployment of 
non-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels, combined with the deployment of 
verified means of capturing existing carbon from the atmosphere. If they 
are not, the WMO’s Taalas commented, “On the current path… we are 
heading toward a temperature increase of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the 
end of the century.”

[...]