4 critical facts about climate change
- The world is getting hotter. According to the IPCC’s sixth assessment report on the state of our climate, the past decade is likely to have been the hottest period in the last 125,000 years. The IPCC assessment also concluded that 2016-20 was the hottest five-year period recorded since at least 1850.
- Humans are the cause, without question. According to 350.org, rising temperatures correlate almost exactly with the release of greenhouse gases. It is not a coincidence. Scripps Institute of Oceanography provide a clear visual guide to that correlation, backed and substantiated by scientific study.
- According to data published by NASA, CO2 is at its highest point in more than two million years. Pre-industrial CO2 levels were around 280 parts per million (PPM). In 2023, we are close to 420 PPM. The last time the atmosphere contained as much CO2 as it does now, according to WIRED, was more than three million years ago, when sea levels were much higher and trees grew on the South Pole.
- According to UN Climate Action, approximately 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions come from land clearing, crop production, and fertilisation, with animal-based food contributing the quarters of that number.