© ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty
"Climate Change is the single biggest threat to life, security and prosperity on Earth," said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa at the roll-out of the report.
"This annual report shows how UN Climate Change is doing everything it can to support, encourage and build on the global response to climate change," Espinosa said, adding that "UN Climate Change's mandate is to lead and support the global community in this international response, with the Paris Agreement and the Convention being the long-term vehicles for united global climate action."
In his foreword to the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, expressed a similar conviction that global warming poses a singular threat to the world in the third millennium.
"Climate change is the defining challenge of our time," Guterres warned, "yet it is still accelerating faster than our efforts to address it. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are higher than they have been for 800,000 years, and they are increasing. So, too, are the catastrophic effects of our warming planet - extreme storms, droughts, fires, floods, melting ice and rising sea levels."
Comment: It's debatable whether all those effects are due to human causes. And if the earth survived CO2 levels this high 800,000 years ago, perhaps the earth has an inbuilt feedback mechanism to take care of it, as in, an ice-age rebound?
Comment: If true, this survey shows some positive trends among second-generation Muslim immigrants. That's not to say conservative critics don't have some valid points, though. The surveys still show that a significant minority support the establishment of an Islamic state - anywhere from 2-7%. That's anywhere from 55,000 to 200,000 UK Muslims. Then again it's probably safe to say that 6% of any population is crazy.
Also, what role the wave of migrants will have is up for debate, in the UK and in Europe as a whole. It doesn't seem likely that their beliefs would match up with second-generation Brits who have lived their entire lives in the country.