Image by Marc Szeglat.

Berkeley Earth, a non-profit climate change organization, concluded that climate chaos was at its worst in the last decade. Its Global Temperature Report for 2024 said that “2024 was the warmest year on Earth since 1850, exceeding the previous record just set in 2023 by a clear and definitive margin. This period, since 1850, is the time when sufficient direct measurements from thermometers exist to create a purely instrumental estimate of changes in global mean temperature. The last ten years have included all ten of the warmest years observed in the instrumental record.”

A climate scientist associated with Berkeley Earth, Zeke Housefather, said in 2023, “global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years rather than continued at a gradual, steady pace. That acceleration means that the effects of climate change we are already seeing — extreme heat waves, wildfires, rainfall and sea level rise — will only grow more severe in the coming years…. Until recently, climate change was framed as an issue that would affect our children. Today it is nearly omnipresent, and it is impossible to ignore. And very soon, with the acceleration, we will experience even more of its effects: Ice sheets and glaciers will melt faster, extreme weather events will become more frequent, and even more plants and animals will be put at risk of extinction.”

The UN reached similar conclusions. “UN weather experts from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed… that 2024 was the hottest year on record, at 1.55 degrees Celsius (C) above pre-industrial temperatures…. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo insisted that “climate history is playing out before our eyes. We’ve had not just one or two record-breaking years, but a full ten-year series. “It is essential to recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet.”

These dismal conclusions about the anthropogenic climate chaos exploded in Southern California........

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