A deadly heatwave in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada that cost nearly 200 lives and flooding in Germany and Belgium that cost 165 more are just the latest examples of increasingly hard-to-miss signals that the impacts of climate change can no longer be viewed as a threat for some time in the distant future; we are experiencing the negative consequences of a warming planet today.
An international team of 27 scientists found that the heat wave in the Northwest was “virtually impossible without climate change” and “calculated that climate change increased the chances of extreme heat occurring by at least 150 times, but likely much more,” reported AP. While the specific contribution of climate change to the flooding in Europe remains to be determined, our heated-up atmosphere “holds more moisture and is already causing heavier rainfall in many storms around the world,” reported The New York Times.
These negative impacts are rapidly growing because average global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times. This means we are already two-thirds of the way towards speeding past the1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit increase that scientists tell us we must not exceed, if we are to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
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GoLocalProv | European Union and China Step Up on Climate - Rob Horowitz
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