{"id":44055,"date":"2019-02-26T11:47:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T16:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44055"},"modified":"2019-02-26T11:47:17","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T16:47:17","slug":"game-over-report-card-on-our-planets-environment%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44055","title":{"rendered":"Game Over? Report Card on Our Planet\u2019s Environment\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Game Over? Report Card on Our Planet\u2019s Environment<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The World Economic Forum\u2019s Global Risks Report for 2019 indicates that most experts point to environmental problems as being the most serious threats to global stability\u2014just as they found in the previous two years. That report follows on one in October 2018 by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It said with \u201chigh confidence\u201d that at the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, \u201cglobal warming is likely to reach 1.5\u00b0C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.\u201d Avoiding the worst-case consequences would require measures that have \u201cno documented historic precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Americans see the evidence of climate-influenced destruction, they\u2019re on edge: Seventy-two percent of those polled late last year considered climate change \u201cimportant,\u201d a 15-percentage point increase over 2015. Sixty-nine percent were \u201cworried\u201d about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here we are again, facing another round of bad news on the environment. Actually, the news is worse this time around. 2018 was the fourth-hottest year on record; 2015-2017 are the other three. The Arctic experienced its second-warmest year ever. The head of the World Meteorological Organization said: \u201cThe 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years. The degree of warming during the past four years has been exceptional, both on land and in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising sea levels, according to the IPCC, \u201cwill continue beyond 2100 even if global warming is limited to 1.5\u00b0C in the 21st century (high confidence). Marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and\/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet could result in multi-metre rise in sea level over hundreds to thousands of years.\u201d Greenland\u2019s and Antarctica\u2019s ice loss has recently received extensive media coverage as scientists have discovered just how far offtheir earlier predictions were. Antarctica\u2019s enormous ice reserves are melting six times faster now than they were between 1979 and 1989. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Game Over? Report Card on Our Planet\u2019s Environment The World Economic Forum\u2019s Global Risks Report for 2019 indicates that most experts point to environmental problems as being the most serious threats to global stability\u2014just as they found in the previous two years. That report follows on one in October 2018 by the UN Intergovernmental Panel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,5493,24478,19076,889],"class_list":["post-44055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-counterpunch","tag-global-risk-report","tag-mel-gurtov","tag-world-economic-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44056,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44055\/revisions\/44056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}