UN sounds clarion call over humans 'irreversible' impact on climate

The U.N. panel on climate change sounded a dire warning on Aug. 9, saying the world is dangerously close to runaway warming - and that humans are "unequivocally" to blame.

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Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, scientists warn in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

That's on top of the deadly heatwaves, gargantuan hurricanes and other weather extremes that are happening now, and are likely to become more severe.

Describing the report as a "code red for humanity", U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged an end to the use of coal and other highly polluting fossil fuels.

"The alarm bells are deafening," Guterres said in a statement. "This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet."

The IPCC report comes just three months before a major U.N. climate conference known as COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, where nations will be under pressure to pledge much more ambitious climate action, and substantial financing to go with it.

Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the report gives the most comprehensive and detailed picture yet of how climate change is altering the natural world - and what could still be ahead.

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Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, the average global temperature is likely to cross the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold within the next 20 years.

So far, nations' pledges to cut emissions have been inadequate for bringing down the level of greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere.

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