Climate change is real

By now, there is little doubt that climate change is real and that human activities are the main cause of the rapid climate change that the world is currently experiencing. Scientists have also established that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere is directly linked to the average global temperature. What is important to note is that the concentration of greenhouse gases has been rising steadily, as have the mean global temperatures, and this has been happening since the time of the Industrial Revolution. It has now been institutionally accepted by the global community that carbon dioxide (CO2), the most abundant greenhouse gas, which accounts for about two-thirds of greenhouse gases, is largely the product of burning fossil fuels. Scientists have also proved beyond any doubt that methane, the primary component of natural gas, is responsible for more than 25 percent of the warming the world is experiencing today. The Methane Emmissions Fact Sheet of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has declared methane a powerful pollutant with a global warming potential over 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide during the 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. As alarm bells about climate change began ringing a little over a decade ago, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide an objective source of scientific information on climate change. In 2013, when it released its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC very categorically stated that climate change is real and that the main cause is human activities leading to the release of polluting gases from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. The IPCC has also said that the impacts of just a 1.1-degree Celsius increase in temperature are here today in the form of increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes, and wildfires. The WMO, on the other hand, has said that the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period and that this 1.1 degree Celsius increase itself has started causing disasters. These included exceptional global heat, retreating ice, and record sea levels driven by greenhouse gases produced by human activities. The UNEP Cooling and Climate Change Fact Sheet, on the other hand, has confirmed that 30 percent of the world’s population is now exposed to deadly heat waves more than 20 days a year. What we are currently experiencing—an increased temperature in Assam, exceptionally warm weather in Kashmir, and unprecedented floods and landslides in Himachal Pradesh—is probably only a trailer of what is actually in store in the near future.