It may snow in New York City this weekend, or it may just rain. If it does snow, it will be the first significant snowfall since February 2022, almost 700 days ago. In the past, New York City’s Central Park averaged about 30 inches of snow annually. But that was before the major impact of climate change began to be felt.
In a press release, the United Nation’s announced that the December 2023 COP28, the climate conference held in Dubai, reached “an agreement that signals the ‘beginning of the end’ of the fossil fuel era.” Supposedly, the 197 participating nations and the European Union laid the “ground for a swift, just and equitable transition, underpinned by deep emissions cuts and scaled-up finance” with the “overarching aim to keep the global temperature limit of 1.5°C within reach.” However, compliance with a reduction in the use of fossil fuels and the pledge to increase the use of non-polluting renewable energy sources remains voluntary, and based on past pledges, highly unlikely. A 1.5°C or 2.7°F average annual global temperature above preindustrial levels may be a tipping point beyond which irreversible climate change will take place. This summer there were already entire months when the average global temperature passed that mark. The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year in human history and projects that 2024 will be even hotter.
When the average annual global temperature inevitably exceeds 1.5°C above preindustrial levels in the next decade, humanity can expect the dying off of coral reefs, increased numbers of violent storms, extended droughts as rain patterns shift, deadly heat waves, uncontrollable forest fires, lower air quality, coastal flooding as polar ice sheets melt, war over diminishing resources, and mass migration.
While COP28 claimed to end on a hopeful note, climate scientists are not so hopeful. They are trying to determine whether record high temperatures in 2023 point to an acceleration in global warming caused by human activity accompanied by even more troubling climate events.
A previously unanticipated problem is the relationship between two types of atmospheric pollutants. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warm the planet. Aerosols have a reverse effect, cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight, but aerosol emissions have been reduced because they cause toxic smog and have a serious impact on public health. The increase in carbon dioxide and methane and the decrease in aerosol emissions since 2000 seems to have speeded up global warming. Pioneering climate researcher James E. Hansen argues that scientists vastly underestimated how much more the planet would warm if nations cleaned up aerosols without cutting carbon emissions. Dr. Hansen’s argument for accelerated warming is based on reconstructions of climatic shifts between ice ages over the last 160,000 years.
Fifty-six million years ago geologic turmoil including volcanic activity and earthquakes added immense amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over the course of between 3,000 and 5,000 years. This caused oceans to become acidic and the mass extinction of species on both land and sea. Similar amounts of carbon dioxide have been pumped into the atmosphere by human action during the Industrial Revolution in less than 250 years. Fifty-six million years ago it took about 150,000 years for the Earth to neutralize the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and for temperatures to drop to previous levels.
Humanity does not have that much time.