11 Terrifying Climate Change Facts in 2017

While a dwindling band of refuseniks still insist that is doesn’t exist, climate change is already here, and it’s only going to get worse, with some of the severe effects having already started to take hold.

The Paris Agreement was implemented as a collaborative global response to climate change, with a goal of reducing emissions. It aims to keep the global temperature rise to just 1.5°C, which would significantly reduce the risks and the impacts associated with climate change. President Donald Trump later decided to pull the US out of the agreement, describing the move as “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty”. Here is a list of 11 terrifying climate change facts in 2017.

1. Record-breaking Temperatures

The 21st century has seen the most temperature records broken in recorded history. The year 2016 was the hottest year on record since 1880 – and third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface temperatures – according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with average temperatures measuring almost one degree Celsius warmer than the mid-20th century mean.

2. No Scientific Debate

A massive 97 percent of researchers believe global warming is happening and that the trends observed over the last past century are probably due to human activity. However, climate change is considered only the third most serious issue facing the world by the world’s population, behind international terrorism and poverty, hunger and the lack of drinking water.

3. Melting Arctic Glaciers

Arctic sea ice coverage has shrunk every decade since 1979 by 3.5 to 4.1 percent. Glaciers have also been in retreat almost everywhere in the world, including major mountain ranges like the Alps, Himalayas and Rockies. In 2017, arctic sea ice reached a record low for the third straight running, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

4. Fast Rising Sea Level

Sea levels rise primarily by the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, as well as the expansion of sea water as it warms. Levels are currently rising at their fastest rate for more than 2,000 years and the current rate of change is 3.4mm a year. In July 2017, a massive crack in the Larson C ice shelf finally gave way sending a 5,800 square km section of ice into the ocean.

5. The Refugee Crisis

Displacement of people as a direct result of global warming is not hypothetical; it’s already happening. On average, 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced since 2008 due to climate change-related weather hazards, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR further says that climate change also acts as a ‘threat multiplier’ in areas of ongoing conflict.

6. Earth’s 2017 Resources Consumed

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. This annual event is getting earlier and earlier in the year. In 2000 it landed in October. In 2015, it was August 13. This year, it landed on August 2.

The world’s superpowers – including China, the US, the UK, Germany and Japan – already use more than double the amount of resources they produce.

7. Great Barrier Reef Damaged

In April 2017, it was revealed that two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been severely damaged by coral bleaching. This occurs when algae living within the coral tissue are expelled, usually as a result of water temperatures being too high. As a result, the coral loses its vibrant appearance, turns white and becomes weaker. Scientists say it will be hard for the damaged coral to recover.

8. More Acidic Ocean

The pH of ocean surface water has decreased by 0.1, which makes them 26 percent more acidic now than at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The waters are more acidic now that at any other point in the last 300,000 years.

9. Global Flooding

The number of people exposed to flooding each year is at risk of tripling from 21 million to 54 million by 2030, according to a study from the World Resources Institute. This would result in the economic costs of flooding increasing from £65 billion to around £340 billion.

10. More Greenhouse Gases

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached the milestone of 400 parts per million for the first time in 2015 and surged again to new records in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

11. Warming Earth

The Earth’s temperature will continue to rise so long as we continue to produce greenhouse gases. The estimates for how much temperatures will increase by 2100 range from 2 degrees Celsius to as much as 6 degrees Celsius.

Climate Change & Pakistan

It cannot be said loud enough or often enough that Pakistan is galloping headlong into an emergency that it can do nothing to stop and very little to mitigate — climate change. Despite having a carbon footprint that is minuscule compared to the likes of America, continental Europe or China, Pakistan is in the top five countries that are going to be adversely — which is a polite way of saying disastrously — affected by this. The argument about who or what has caused climate change is academic and for us an irrelevance. The government is gradually waking up to unpleasant realities and the deputy director for the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) says that there is a ‘dire need to adopt measures on a war footing to create awareness among the farming community about the impacts of climate change.’ He is exactly right though whether anybody is listening to him is something of a moot point.

Brutally put, Pakistan stands to see famine and starvation because rising temperatures pose a serious risk to sustainable food security and there is a likelihood that unless changes can be effected then food consumption needs are not going to be met. There is no point in beating about the bush or using euphemistic language. Pakistan is among the countries that are going to see catastrophic consequences if temperatures continue to rise as they have; and there is no indication that the Paris Climate Accords are going to be able to apply the brakes in time to stop millions, many millions, hitting the wall with their feet hard down on the accelerator.

This is not alarmism for the sake of a headline; this is what is going to happen a generation hence. The Asian Development Bank in a new report says that a ‘business as usual approach’ is going to be disastrous for all the Asian countries. It is not wrong. Just how many wake-up calls do we need?