© AP Photo/Vadim GhirdaU.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urges world leaders in 2022 to take “credible” new action to curb climate change, warning that efforts so far fall short of what’s needed to avert catastrophe.
He went on to lament how "terrifying" it is seeing children "swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat."
The veteran Portuguese socialist painted his picture of a world in peril during a streamed speech from U.N. headquarters in New York, returning once more to a theme of climate doom he has used almost without respite since he took office.
He said "short of a mini ice age" over coming days, some scientists estimate July 2023 would shatter records across the board.
"Climate change is here. It is terrifying, and it is just the beginning," Guterres outlined. "The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.
"The consequences are clear and they are tragic — children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat.
"For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer."
Guterres spoke as a separate analysis for the month, published Friday by Leipzig University climate scientist Karsten Haustein, estimated July could possibly finish 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the 2019 record.
Dr Haustein predicted not only would that make it the warmest month on record, but potentially in "thousands if not tens of thousands of years."
"We may have to go back all the way to the Eemian warm period (about 120,000 years ago) to find similarly warm conditions," he said, ABC News reports.
"But since paleo-temperature records do not provide high enough temporal resolution, we cannot say with certainty that this July hasn't been hotter during the peak of the current interglacial [period]."
This is not the first time Guterres has warned the world of impending climate doom.
Just last November he told participants in the COP27 climate summit of impending "climate chaos" due to humanity's "fossil fuel addiction," as Breitbart News reported.
"We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator," the career diplomat diplomat insisted during his Cop27 opening speech in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
"How will we answer when baby 8 billion is old enough to ask: What did you do for our world and for our planet when you had the chance?" he asked.
Previous to that in 2019 the secretary-general said climate-related devastation is striking the planet on a weekly basis and global action must be undertaken immediately with U.N. agencies in the lead, a message echoed by climate protesters.
"We are here because the world is facing a grave climate emergency," Guterres told a two-day Abu Dhabi climate meeting ahead of a Climate Action Summit in New York.
"Climate disruption is happening now... It is progressing even faster than the world's top scientists have predicted," the U.N. secretary general said. "It is outpacing our efforts to address it. Climate change is running faster than we are."
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"UK’S COLD SUMMER DRAGS ON The UK Met Office insists 40C summers will soon to be commonplace. And so by their calculations, the persistently chilly July just gone was made all the more extraordinary. It was a historically cold month and there’s still no warm-up in sight. The Met Office are keen to blame the jet stream for the UK’s miserable summer, and they’re right to.
That band of fast-flowing air some 6 miles above our heads has indeed ‘buckled’ and is indeed responsible for funneling polar air over not just the UK but the majority of the European continent, too, which has resulted in a host new low temperature records across many nations, as well as heavy summer snow in the Alps.
When it comes to anomalous cold , however –such as this year’s no-show summer– ‘natural’ climatic elements are always to blame, whereas any unusually hot conditions –such as last year’s heatwave (which saw an airport nudge above 40C for a few hours, literally)– are always deemed consistent with IPCC ‘global boiling’ divinations.
It couldn’t possibly be the case that the UK’s toasty few days of 2022 was also due to the jet stream–seeing it subject to a rising African plume…? No, it would appear that explanation is only viable when it comes to descending Arctic air masses, i.e. cold..."
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