HEAT strikes, like those due to begin this Friday by London bus drivers organised in the Unite union, will become more common as long as governments shut their eyes to the scale of climate adaptation needed.
This punishing summer, now entering its fifth heatwave, is extreme but not unexpected.
All 10 of the hottest years on record in Britain have been since 2002. The reality of a warming climate has been recognised for decades. The TUC has been urging a legal maximum workplace temperature since 2008.
Britain is bound by international treaties to seek to reduce the emissions that cause global warming, though serious action to do so has fallen well short of what’s required and open climate denialism is now fashionable again, thanks to an aggressive new right taking inspiration from the anti-science Donald Trump regime in the United States.
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Increased frequency of extreme weather, the see-saw between longer droughts and fiercer floods that are ruining harvests, has not interrupted British governments in their long push to debilitate the public sector, imposing deep cuts on the fire brigade as on every service that cannot be turned into a cash cow for private providers.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Shrivelled sunflowers near the village of Kovilj, Serbia. Photograph: Andrej Isaković/AFP/Getty Image.
Slovakia reaches new high of 42C as authorities in Poland forced to shut down Kozienice and Połaniec power plants
Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues.
Countries including Slovakia, Austria and Hungary registered record temperatures. On Thursday, the Slovakian hydrometeorological agency said a new high of 42C (108F) had been reached in Dolné Plachtince.
Authorities in Poland were forced to shut down the Kozienice and Połaniec coal-fired power plants after critically low water levels in the Vistula River limited cooling water supplies. The disruption removed about 1.3GW of capacity from Poland’s power system.
In Germany, climate activists demanding an end to the use of fossil fuels demonstrated outside the chancellery against the lack of government action to keep people safe from extreme heat. An estimated 11,900 people across the country have died from heat this summer, according to new estimates from the Robert Koch Institute.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
We are living in a world that is warming at the fastest rate since records began. Yet, governments have been slow to act.
The annual global climate change conference of the parties (COP30) is just months away. All of the 197 countries that belong to the United Nations were supposed to have submitted updated national climate plans to the UN by February this year. These plans outline how each country will cut its greenhouse gas emissions in line with the legally binding international Paris Agreement. This agreement commits all signatories to limiting human-caused global warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Governments must also bring their newly updated national climate action plans to COP30 and show how they plan to adapt to the impacts that climate change will bring.
The nationally determined contributions are very important in setting out countries’ short- to medium-term commitments on climate change. They also provide a direction of travel that can inform broader policy decisions and investments. Aligning climate plans with development goals could lift 175 million people out of poverty.
But arguably only one of the submitted plans – the UK’s – is compatible with the Paris Agreement.
We are climate scientists, and one of us (Piers Forster) leads the global science team that publishes the annual Indicators of Global Climate Change report. This report gives an overview of the state of the climate system. It is based on calculations of the net emissions of greenhouse gases globally, how these are concentrating in the atmosphere, how temperatures are rising on the ground, and how much of this warming has been caused by humans.
The report also looks at how extreme temperatures and rainfall are intensifying, how much the sea levels are rising, and how much carbon dioxide can still be emitted before the planet’s temperature exceeds 1.5°C more than it was in pre-industrial times. This is important because staying within 1.5°C is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Our report shows that human-caused global warming reached 1.36°C in 2024. This boosted average global temperatures (a combination of human-induced warming and natural variability in the climate system) to 1.52°C. In other words, the world has already reached the level where it has warmed so much that it cannot avoid significant impacts from climate change. There is no doubt we are in dangerous waters.
Our dangerously hot planet
Although last year’s global temperatures were very high, they were also alarmingly unexceptional. The data speaks for itself. Continued record high levels of greenhouse gas emissions have led to rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
The result is rising temperatures that are rapidly eating into the remaining carbon budget (the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted within an agreed time). This will be exhausted in less than three years at current levels of emissions.
We need to face this head on: the window to stay within 1.5°C is essentially shut. Even if we can bring temperatures back down in future, it will be a long and difficult road.
At the same time, climate extremes are intensifying, bringing long-term risks and costs to the global economy but also, importantly, people. The African continent is now facing its deadliest climate crisis in over a decade.
It would be impossible to imagine economies operating without fast access to trusted data. When share prices plummet or growth stalls, politicians and business leaders act decisively. None would tolerate outdated intelligence on sales or the stock market.
But when it comes to climate, the speed of climate change often outpaces the data available. This means fast decisions can’t be made. If we treated climate data as we do financial reports, panic would ensue after each dire update. But while governments routinely pivot when faced with an economic downturn, they have been far slower to respond to what key climate indicators – the Earth’s vital signs – are telling us.
What needs to happen next
As more countries develop their climate plans, it’s time for leaders across the globe to face the hard truths of climate science.
Governments need to have fast access to trusted climate data so that they can develop up-to-date national climate plans. The national climate plans need to take a global perspective too. This is really important for fairness and equity. For example, developed countries must acknowledge that they’ve emitted more greenhouse gases and take the lead in presenting ambitious mitigation efforts and in providing finance for other countries to decarbonise and adapt.
In Africa, the UN is hosting UNFCCC Climate Week in Addis Ababa in September. As well as making plans for COP30, there will be sessions on accessing climate finance and ensuring that the transition to zero human-caused carbon emissions by 2050 (net zero) is just and equitable. The summit also aims to support countries that are still working on their national climate plans.
If nationally determined contributions are implemented, the pace of climate change will slow down. This is vital not just for the countries – and economies – currently on the frontline against climate change, but for a functioning global society.
Just five of the G20 countries have submitted their 2035 plans: Canada, Brazil, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom. But the G20 is responsible for around 80% of global emissions. This means that South Africa’s current G20 presidency can help to ensure that the world prioritises efforts to help developing countries finance their transition to a low-carbon economy.
Another worrying factor is that just 10 of the updated nationally determined contributions have reaffirmed or strengthened commitments to move away from fossil fuels. This means that national climate plans from the European Union, China and India will be key in testing their climate leadership and keeping the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature goals alive. Many other countries will be scrutinising what these countries commit to before they submit their own national climate plans.
The data in our report helps the world to understand not just what’s happened in recent years, but also what to expect further down the track.
Our hope is that these and other countries submit ambitious and credible plans well before COP30. If they do, this will finally close the gap between acknowledging the climate crisis and making decisive efforts to address it. Every tonne of greenhouse gas emissions matters.
Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change; Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of Leeds and Debbie Rosen, Research and Innovation Development Manager for the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, University of Leeds
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Responding to the Met Office’s State of the Climate Report, published today, co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay MP, has called on the Prime Minister to put climate resilience on a statutory footing. He said:
“England is facing its driest start to a year in my lifetime. Extreme weather is becoming the norm, and we are nowhere near prepared to protect our citizens. Our climate is fuelling extreme weather, and that is having direct and urgent consequences in the here and now.
He continued: ”We had the warmest spring on record, and we are in the middle of this summer’s third heatwave. The last three years have been among the top five warmest on record. The Government has not adequately prepared our infrastructure to protect our citizens.”
”The Government must outline the steps they are taking to prepare for the increasing threat of extreme temperatures. This is not just about this summer, it’s about how we adapt as the climate crisis continues to escalate.”
“We need to safeguard the public from this rising climate threat. That is why the Prime Minister must put climate resilience on a statutory footing, requiring local councils and major infrastructure providers to carry out climate risk assessments for all projects.”
The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s the stark warning from more than 60 of the world’s leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming.
Nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above levels of the late 1800s in a landmark agreement in 2015, with the aim of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change.
But countries have continued to burn record amounts of coal, oil and gas and chop down carbon-rich forests – leaving that international goal in peril.
“Things are all moving in the wrong direction,” said lead author Prof Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.
“We’re seeing some unprecedented changes and we’re also seeing the heating of the Earth and sea-level rise accelerating as well.”
These changes “have been predicted for some time and we can directly place them back to the very high level of emissions”, he added.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
