Unprecedented, inevitable and irreversible
Damning words dominate the latest report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report, titled ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, addresses the most up-to- date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change. Some of the findings in the report are that it can be unequivocally proven that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, resulting in “widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere”. The report also says that “the scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years”, and that it is inevitable that global surface temperature would continue to increase until at least the…