Its official: 2023 was the hottest year on record:
2023 “smashed” the record for the hottest year by a huge margin, providing “dramatic testimony” of how much warmer and more dangerous today’s climate is from the cooler one in which human civilisation developed.1.5C is the limit of a safe climate. Once we're over that, things are going to get worse with every extra 0.1C. And things are already pretty bad already, with fires, floods, heatwaves, storms, and droughts.The planet was 1.48C hotter in 2023 compared with the period before the mass burning of fossil fuels ignited the climate crisis. The figure is very close to the 1.5C temperature target set by countries in Paris in 2015, although the global temperature would need to be consistently above 1.5C for the target to be considered broken.
Scientists at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS) said it was likely the 1.5C mark will be passed for the first time in the next 12 months.
Which raises the obvious question: what is our new government going to do about this? Try and limit the damage by reducing emissions? Or just fiddle while we all burn?
