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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
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href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/30/total-climate-meltdown-inevitable-heatwaves-global-catastrophe">theguardian.com</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">‘Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total
climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Robin McKie</div>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">8-10 minutes</div>
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<p><span><span>T</span></span><span>he publication of Bill
McGuire’s latest book, <em>Hothouse Earth</em>, could
not be more timely. Appearing in the shops this week, it
will be perused by sweltering customers who have just
endured record high temperatures across the UK and now
face the prospect of weeks of drought to add to their
discomfort.</span></p>
<p>And this is just the beginning, insists McGuire, who is
emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at
University College London. As he makes clear in his
uncompromising depiction of the coming climatic
catastrophe, we have – for far too long – ignored explicit
warnings that rising carbon emissions are dangerously
heating the Earth. Now we are going to pay the price for
our complacency in the form of storms, floods, droughts
and heatwaves that will easily surpass current extremes.</p>
<p>The crucial point, he argues, is that there is now no
chance of us avoiding a perilous, all-pervasive climate
breakdown. We have passed the point of no return and can
expect a future in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures
in excess of 50C (120F) are common in the tropics; where
summers at temperate latitudes will invariably be baking
hot, and where our oceans are destined to become warm and
acidic. “A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile
world that its grandparents did,” McGuire insists.</p>
<figure id="67579110-4c42-4de8-bf17-6f9f4897bd38"
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media="(min-width: 320px)"><img alt="Bill McGuire."
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/678900193ad42dc2b6c89d105b99ac33fe7dd386/1322_517_1488_1860/master/1488.jpg?width=140&quality=85&fit=max&s=11dfc7c2cd15b7ef5402943891227ea4"
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<figure id="67579110-4c42-4de8-bf17-6f9f4897bd38"
data-spacefinder-role="thumbnail"
data-spacefinder-type="model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.ImageBlockElement"><figcaption><span>Bill
McGuire is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate
hazards at University College London and was also an adviser
to the UK government.</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>In this respect, the volcanologist, who was also a member of the
UK government’s Natural Hazard Working Group, takes an extreme
position. Most other climate experts still maintain we have time
left, although not very much, to bring about meaningful reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions. A rapid drive to net zero and the
halting of global warming is still within our grasp, they say.</p>
<p>Such claims are dismissed by McGuire. “I know a lot of people
working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very
different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more
scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in
public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only
makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are
going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.”</p>
<p>McGuire finished writing <em>Hothouse Earth</em> at the end of
2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had
just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the
UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as
publication loomed, he found that many of those records had
already been broken. “That is the trouble with writing a book
about climate breakdown,” says McGuire. “By the time it is
published it is already out of date. That is how fast things are
moving.”</p>
<p>Among the records broken during the book’s editing was the
announcement that a temperature of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/19/a-wake-up-call-as-extreme-heat-blazes-across-uk-experts-say-net-zero-is-the-only-way-out#:~:text=Storms%20threaten%20more%20disruption%20on%20heels%20of%20record%2Dbreaking%20UK%20heat,-After%20temperatures%20reached&text=Hundreds%20of%20firefighters%20battled%20blazes,call%E2%80%9D%20for%20the%20climate%20emergency."
title="" data-link-name="in body link">40.3C was reached in east
England on 19 July</a>, the highest ever recorded in the UK.
(The country’s previous hottest temperature, 38.7C, was in
Cambridge in 2019.)</p>
<p>In addition, London’s fire service had to tackle blazes across
the capital, with one conflagration destroying <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/26/uk-cities-need-to-prepare-for-future-wildfires-say-fire-chiefs"
title="" data-link-name="in body link">16 homes in Wennington,
east London</a>. Crews there had to fight to save the local fire
station itself. “Who would have thought that a village on the edge
of London would be almost wiped out by wildfires in 2022,” says
McGuire. “If this country needs a wake-up call then surely that is
it.”</p>
<p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/wildfires" title=""
data-link-name="in body link">Wildfires of unprecedented
intensity and ferocity</a> have also swept across Europe, North
America and Australia this year, while record rainfall in the
midwest led to the devastating <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/13/yellowstone-national-park-closure-flooding-mudslides"
title="" data-link-name="in body link">flooding in the US’s
Yellowstone national park</a>. “And as we head further into
2022, it is already a different world out there,” he adds. “Soon
it will be unrecognisable to every one of us.”</p>
<figure id="23e0a2df-0fdb-4ba6-abd5-3207b61994c1"
data-spacefinder-role="inline"
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480px)"><source media="(min-width: 320px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25), (min-width: 320px)
and (min-resolution: 120dpi)"><source media="(min-width:
320px)"><img alt="Kurdish farmers battle a blaze in a wheat
field in Syria’s north-eastern Hasakah province, a
breadbasket for the region."
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0600f3f23e6d84ecd8302d8f6707d5362b5803cb/0_247_5357_3216/master/5357.jpg?width=620&quality=85&fit=max&s=c409e89e36a38c6a9fc24f4d9951d648"
class="moz-reader-block-img" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="620" height="372"></picture></div>
<figcaption><span><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
width="18" height="13" viewBox="0 0 18 13"></svg></span></figcaption></figure>
<figure id="23e0a2df-0fdb-4ba6-abd5-3207b61994c1"
data-spacefinder-role="inline"
data-spacefinder-type="model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.ImageBlockElement"><figcaption><span>Kurdish
farmers battle a blaze in a wheat field in Syria’s
north-eastern Hasakah province, a breadbasket for the region.</span>
Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption></figure>
<p>These changes underline one of the most startling aspects of
climate breakdown: the speed with which global average temperature
rises translate into extreme weather.</p>
<p>“Just look at what is happening already to a world which has only
heated up by just over one degree,” says McGuire. “It turns out
the climate is changing for the worse far quicker than predicted
by early climate models. That’s something that was never
expected.”</p>
<figure id="4d458a49-4e62-4249-ad62-44fd720fd923"
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viewBox="0 0 36 23"></svg></span></figcaption></div>
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data-spacefinder-role="inline"
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<div data-chromatic="ignore" data-component="youtube-atom"><figcaption><span>2050:
what happens if we ignore the climate crisis – video
explainer </span></figcaption></div>
</figure>
<p>Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when humanity began
pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, global temperatures
have risen by just over 1C. At the Cop26 climate meeting in
Glasgow last year, it was agreed that every effort should be made
to try to <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-the-goal-of-15c-of-climate-heating-is-alive-but-only-just"
title="" data-link-name="in body link">limit that rise to 1.5C</a>,
although to achieve such a goal, it was calculated that global
carbon emissions will have to be reduced by 45% by 2030.</p>
<p>“In the real world, that is not going to happen,” says McGuire.
“Instead, we are on course for close to a 14% rise in emissions by
that date – which will almost certainly see us shatter the 1.5C
guardrail in less than a decade.”</p>
<p>And we should be in no doubt about the consequences. Anything
above 1.5C will see a world plagued by intense summer heat,
extreme drought, devastating floods, reduced crop yields, rapidly
melting ice sheets and surging sea levels. A rise of 2C and above
will seriously threaten the stability of global society, McGuire
argues. It should also be noted that according to the most hopeful
estimates of emission cut pledges made at Cop26, the world is on
course to heat up by between 2.4C and 3C.</p>
<p>From this perspective it is clear we can do little to avoid the
coming climate breakdown. Instead we need to adapt to the hothouse
world that lies ahead and to start taking action to try to stop a
bleak situation deteriorating even further, McGuire says.</p>
<figure id="421284c4-ffad-47ee-b2bd-a69571ab4eb9"
data-spacefinder-role="inline"
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<div><picture><source media="(min-width: 660px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25), (min-width: 660px)
and (min-resolution: 120dpi)"><source media="(min-width:
660px)"><source media="(min-width: 480px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25), (min-width: 480px)
and (min-resolution: 120dpi)"><source media="(min-width:
480px)"><source media="(min-width: 320px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25), (min-width: 320px)
and (min-resolution: 120dpi)"><source media="(min-width:
320px)"><img alt="The Fox Glacier in New Zealand in winter."
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fb7a7e187cd208a7efe3f87552633d72922dad18/0_174_4288_2573/master/4288.jpg?width=620&quality=85&fit=max&s=e7dbd6dfbf9f8e8afbc879328d7ac08a"
class="moz-reader-block-img" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="620" height="372"></picture></div>
<figcaption><span><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
width="18" height="13" viewBox="0 0 18 13"></svg></span></figcaption></figure>
<figure id="421284c4-ffad-47ee-b2bd-a69571ab4eb9"
data-spacefinder-role="inline"
data-spacefinder-type="model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.ImageBlockElement"><figcaption><span>The
Fox glacier in New Zealand in winter. It has retreated by 900m
in a decade.</span> Photograph: Gabor Kovacs/Alamy</figcaption></figure>
<p>Certainly, as it stands, Britain – although relatively well
placed to counter the worst effects of the coming climate
breakdown – faces major headaches. Heatwaves will become more
frequent, get hotter and last longer. Huge numbers of modern,
tiny, poorly insulated UK homes will become heat traps,
responsible for thousands of deaths every summer by 2050.</p>
<p>“Despite repeated warnings, hundreds of thousands of these
inappropriate homes continue to be built every year,” adds
McGuire.</p>
<p>As to the reason for the world’s tragically tardy response,
McGuire blames a “conspiracy of ignorance, inertia, poor
governance, and obfuscation and lies by climate change deniers
that has ensured that we have sleepwalked to within less than half
a degree of the dangerous 1.5C climate change guardrail. Soon,
barring some sort of miracle, we will crash through it.”</p>
<p>The future is forbidding from this perspective, though McGuire
stresses that if carbon emissions can be cut substantially in the
near future, and if we start to adapt to a much hotter world
today, a truly calamitous and unsustainable future can be avoided.
The days ahead will be grimmer, but not disastrous. We may not be
able to give climate breakdown the slip but we can head off
further instalments that would appear as a climate cataclysm bad
enough to threaten the very survival of human civilisation.</p>
<p>“This is a call to arms,” he says. “So if you feel the need to
glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it.
Drive an electric car or, even better, use public transport, walk
or cycle. Switch to a green energy tariff; eat less meat. Stop
flying; lobby your elected representatives at both local and
national level; and use your vote wisely to put in power a
government that walks the talk on the climate emergency.”</p>
<p><em>Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide</em> by Bill McGuire is
published by Icon Books, £9.99</p>
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(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25), (min-width: 320px)
and (min-resolution: 120dpi)"><source media="(min-width:
320px)"><img alt="The Gulf Stream is seen on map showing sea
surface temperature"
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4f77ab78e2c6b53bbe44733f241e467f2579effa/54_0_1800_1080/master/1800.jpg?width=620&quality=85&fit=max&s=378c86174aff3c7a85fccbf4d173bd9a"
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width="620" height="372"></picture></div>
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width="18" height="13" viewBox="0 0 18 13"></svg></span></figcaption></figure>
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