The Scientific evidence and observations of Global Warming continue.....
This is for everyone to take note and consider, including
@Hingdog and
@pints and the deniers club.
And with catastrophic floods in Europe and India, unprecedented heatwaves in British Columbia and dozens of wildfires raging across the US west, it's frighteningly obvious that the climate emergency is not going anywhere.
Pandemic disrupts Earth's 'vital signs'
The research, published today in the scientific journalBioScience, is not peer reviewed, but is a continuation of the 2019climate emergency declaration, which was endorsed by over 11,000 scientists.
That number now sits at over 14,000 scientists from 158 countries.
The scientists involved chose 31 indicators that correspond to the effects of human activities on the climate, environment, and society, in an attempt to broaden discussions of climate change beyond global surface temperatures.
These indicators, which they call Earth's "vital signs", include things like human population, meat production, tree cover loss, carbon dioxide emissions, national declarations of climate emergency, and sea-level change.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many of these "vital signs", but also provided insights into how a major shift in human activity can impact climate change, according to report author Thomas Newsome from the University of Sydney.
"Even with that decline in air transport and the general slowdown in human movement, it generally didn't have an overall impact on greenhouse gas emissions," Dr Newsome said.
Fossil fuel subsidies holding back progress
A shift in both fossil fuels divestment and subsidies over the past two years does signal some movement in the right direction, Dr Newsome said.
Around $8.8 trillion (US$6.5 trillion) was divested from fossil fuels between 2018 and 2020, with most of that being from faith-based groups, philanthropic foundations, education, government, and pension funds.
And fossil fuel consumption subsidies — relating to prices consumers pay for energy — fell to a record low of $245 billion (US$181 billion) in 2020, which was 42 per cent lower than 2019 levels.
"It demonstrates that there are economic signals here that we're heading in the right direction," Dr Newsome said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-07-28/climate-emergency-pandemic-planet-vital-signs-worsening/100329094
