IPCC report: The next few years are critical

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The urgency of action on climate change is a complicated thing. On the one hand, the harm of inaction is real and growing every year. On the other hand, there's no such thing as "too late." Plug in some numbers, and you can define a corresponding deadline to hit a target, but we're not dealing with an all-or-nothing proposition. There is a continuum of consequences, and our choices can always move us one notch toward "better" or "worse."

With that in mind, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows the next few years are a critical window of opportunity for our hopes of limiting global warming to the benchmarks of 1.5 C or 2 C. Those numbers aren't magic, but they are meaningful. First, they represent better futures than any larger number on the thermometer. Second, these are the targets that international negotiations have long centered around.

(Giga)tons of work to do

The release is the third and final section of the 6th Assessment Report. The first two releases handled the physical science of a changing climate and the impacts of climate change. This one deals with climate solutions called "mitigation" in hazards parlance. The release examines past and present greenhouse gas emissions and illuminates the path to eliminating emissions and stabilizing our planet's climate.

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