WILDFIRES in Los Angeles, heavy snow in other parts of the US, floods in Saudi Arabia and heatwaves across Australia have all confirmed the fears of climate scientists.
The Climate Council, an independent organisation formed after the Abbott Government abolished the Climate Commission in 2013, says scientists have confirmed 2024 was the world’s hottest since records began.
It eclipsed the record set in 2023 and raises alarms that burning fossil fuels is leaving the planet “teetering on the brink” of breaking the 1.5°C barrier set by the Paris Agreement.
The Council says coordinated modelling and analysis produced by experts at NASA, the European climate service Copernicus, the US weather service NOAA, the UK Met Office, Berkeley Earth and the World Meteorological Organisation has found that every year of the past decade is one of the top ten on record.
“These are not the records any climate scientist wants to see broken,” said Climate Councillor Professor David Karoly.
“When it comes to rising temperatures, rising sea levels and rising damage bills from ‘unnatural’ disasters, every fraction of a degree matters.”
A warmer atmosphere also supercharges rain events, like the flooding in Spain that saw cars swept through the streets and, closer to home, the flooding from ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily that became a disaster event in Queensland last January.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and damaging and it’s not just climate scientists who are alarmed.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said a dangerous combination of “historic” winds and extensive drought created the “perfect storm” for her city’s raging wildfires.
Early this week, an open letter written by Anjali Sharma, Jess Travers-Wolf, Hannah Vardy and Daisy Jeffrey, urged the Federal Government to legislate a “Duty of Care” to young people and future generations.
More than 50 individuals and organisations signed the letter, including Lucy Turnbull AO, John Hewson, Craig Foster, Peter Doherty, Emma McKeon and Grace Tame.
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said, “People worldwide have suffered through ten years of record-breaking temperatures, driving deadly heatwaves, ferocious fires and record breaking flooding.”
“We have started to make real progress. Our grid is more renewable than ever, new EVs have hit the market at record rates, and we’ve just had a bumper year for big clean energy and storage projects.
“It’s time to draw a line in the sand and say ‘no more fossil-fuelled temperature records’.
“Australia has everything we need for this to be the year we set records for all the right reasons, from climate ambition to renewable power [and] nature restoration to clean transport.
“We can clean up our energy system by the 2030s.”
By Andrew VIVIAN
