15.000 Scientists Said Earth May Collapse Soon
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The authors have spent years monitoring 35 of Earth’s vital signs, such as global tree cover, greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean temperatures, and populations of humans and livestock.
The new report cautions that 20 of those signs are now at record extremes, which is up from 16 in 2022.
Ripple’s team noted that natural effects, such as the El Niño weather pattern and the 2022 eruption of an underwater volcano, were a factor in the record-smashing climate extremes this year.
However, the researchers stressed that human-driven climate change is exacerbating many of these natural processes in ways that will generate more frequent and catastrophic anomalies in the coming decades.
The report includes a section entitled “Untold Human Suffering in Pictures” that offers a powerful visual accounting of people experiencing climate-related disasters over the past several years.
The people who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change tend to live in less wealthy nations that have contributed the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, highlighting the need for environmental justice movements.
“In 2023, climate change likely contributed to a number of major extreme weather events and disasters,” the researchers wrote, referencing deadly floods in China and India, a devastating storm in Libya that killed thousands of people, and heat-waves around the world.
“As these impacts continue to accelerate, more funding to compensate for climate-related loss and damage in developing countries is urgently needed.”
The researchers also mentioned: “The effects of global warming are progressively more severe, and possibilities such as a worldwide societal breakdown are feasible and dangerously underexplored,”
“By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individual, approximately one-third to one-half of the global population might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change," they continued.
