Climate change poses an “existential threat” to life on Earth, prominent scientists warned Tuesday, in an assessment on this year’s avalanche of heat records and weather extremes that they said are hitting more ferociously than expected.
With expectations that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, regions across the planet have been scorched by deadly heat waves.
Others have been hit by floods, or in some cases, have suffered both extremes in quick succession.
“The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered,” said an international coalition of authors in a new report published in the journal BioScience.
Their stark assessment: “Life on planet Earth is under siege”.
They said humanity had made “minimal progress” in curbing its planet-heating emissions, with major greenhouse gases at record levels, and subsidies for fossil fuels soaring last year.
The damning assessment comes just a month ahead of UN COP28 climate negotiations to be held in oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
“We must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat,” the authors said.
The study on the state of the climate looked at recent data on 35 planetary “vital signs” and found 20 of these were at record extremes this year.
‘Off the chart’
Just roughly 1.2 degrees Celsius of temperature rise above pre-industrial levels has triggered a range of calamitous and costly consequences.
This year has also seen the beginning of a warming El Nino weather phenomenon.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service has said that the three months to September were the hottest period ever recorded, and likely the hottest in approximately 120,000 years.
Unusual climate anomalies in 2023 (the red line, which appears bold in print). Sea ice extent (a, b), temperatures (c–e), and area burned in Canada (f) are presently far outside their historical ranges. These anomalies may be due to both climate change and other factors. Sources and additional details about each variable are provided in supplemental file S1. Each line corresponds to a different year, with darker gray representing later years. —BioScience
Many climate-related records were broken by “enormous margins” in 2023, the report said, particularly temperatures in the oceans, which have absorbed almost all the excess heat caused by human carbon pollution.
Co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said recorded sea surface temperatures “go completely off the chart” and scientists are not yet able to fully explain why.
The potentially serious impacts include threats to sea life and coral reefs and an increase in the intensity of large tropical storms, the report said.
People across the planet have faced heatwaves and droughts this year, while severe flooding has struck in the US, China and India and beyond.
In Canada, record wildfires partly related to climate change released more carbon dioxide than the country’s total 2021 greenhouse gas emissions, the report said.
1.5C era
Before 2023, days with global average temperatures more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels were a rarity, the authors said. This year had already registered 38 such days by mid-September.
The more ambitious Paris Agreement target of 1.5C will be measured over decades.
But lead author William Ripple, professor at Oregon State University, said we are likely entering a period where annual temperatures will reach that level or higher, risking danger from climate feedback loops and tipping points.
“Once crossed, these tipping points could change our climate in ways that may be difficult or impossible to reverse,” he told AFP.
These could include the meltdown of the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, thawing of large areas of permafrost and widespread coral reef die back.
With some tipping points “we’re not going to avoid them now, it’s more about slowing the damage”, said co-author Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter
To do that, emissions must be slashed and temperature rise curbed.
Every fraction of a degree matters, Lenton told AFP: “There’s still a lot to play for.”
That includes the number of people who might face intolerable conditions in coming decades, like severe heat, limited food availability and climate extremes.
The report said three to six billion people could be “confined beyond the livable region” by century’s end.
“Many world leaders have generally continued to support business as usual, rather than enacting policies to curb climate change and sustain life on Earth,” said Ripple.
“We hope recent extreme weather events will help motivate policymakers at the upcoming COP28 climate conference to support massive cuts in fossil fuel emissions and increased funding for climate adaptation, especially in the world’s most vulnerable regions.”
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif was visited in Islamabad by a four-person Google delegation led by Mr. Scott Beaumont, President of the APAC area.
Pakistan’s digital economy is about to undergo a revolutionary change, according to the prime minister, who greeted the team. Speaking on the government’s intentions to reach the goal of US$ 25 billion in exports over the next five years, the prime minister revealed that funding will be used for youth training, IT infrastructure upgrades, and regulatory environment enhancements. Pakistan’s economy is being fully digitalised, he remarked. In his attempts, he stressed the need of working together with a tech behemoth like Google.
The Prime Minister praised Google for pioneering projects that have dramatically enhanced the lives of thousands of Pakistanis in recent years, as well as for its involvement in propelling the country’s digital economy closer to reality. Noting with satisfaction that Google has helped Pakistani young land about a million jobs in 2023 alone, the Prime Minister emphasised that this is a testament to both Google’s dedication to upskilling and empowering Pakistan’s youth and Pakistan’s potential in the digital marketplace.
Informing the Prime Minister of its future involvement intentions, Mr. Scott stated that Google has made the decision to support the government’s youth skill-training initiatives and to expand its investment footprint in Pakistan. He went on to say that for a values-driven digital firm like Google, the growing economy and the sizeable youth population are crucial for optimising the economic benefits of technology. He restated that Pakistan’s IT industry will undergo a revolution when five lac Chromebooks are produced there by 2026.
Android users now have the ability to install or update many apps or games at once in the Play Store thanks to a feature introduced by tech giant Google.
Even if Android users downloaded or tried to update several apps or games at once, the prior capability would only process one app at a time.
In the Google Play Store, users can now download or manually update up to three apps or games at once, according to a GSMArena report.
with order to assist Android users with updating or installing multiple apps at once, Google is reportedly already starting to roll out the new feature in a few select locations, including India.
The feature will process three apps at once while sending the fourth to pending when customers install or manually update programs.
When configuring new phones or recovering from a backup, this feature is said to save a tonne of time.
It should be mentioned that Apple has long since permitted customers to download and install up to three iOS apps at once from the App Store.
According to GSMArena, the function is really available on a few cell phones in some regions, even though Google has not formally confirmed when it will appear or whether it will work with any particular handset.
Google started releasing a new AI-powered feature for Android phones a few weeks ago that locks users out of their data to prevent hackers from accessing it.
According to a Forbes story, cellphones running Android 10 or later will soon be able to use the function, which incorporates artificial intelligence.
The anti-theft feature known as “theft detection lock” is currently being rolled out to certain users, according to Mishaal Rahman, who frequently updates his followers on the most recent OS changes on X.
A restricted group of customers who registered for the beta program in Brazil are now receiving theft detection locks, according to Rahman’s post.
Rehman claims that Google Play Services will be used to provide the AI-powered feature to all Android 10 devices.