Avoiding disaster: The starkest warning yet on climate change

ITV News Science Editor Deborah Cohen has the details of the report

It’s becoming an increasingly familiar scene: over the past few days, intense rain and record-breaking flooding have left eight people dead and thousands of homes submerged in Australia.

The pictures of people evacuating their homes come on the same day the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of the “unequivocal” threat posed by global warming to human wellbeing and the health of the planet in perhaps its starkest report yet.

Droughts, floods, heatwaves and other extreme weather are increasing and in some instances causing “irreversible” damage.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, didn’t mince his words. “Nearly half of humanity is living in the danger zone – now,” he said. 

Put bluntly, people are getting “clobbered” by climate change.

The report says that extreme weather events linked to climate change like floods and heatwaves are hitting humans and other species much harder than previous assessments suggested.

It warns that if we don’t change our ways, we’ll have to face a slew of problems around the world including death and sickness.

The effects are being felt everywhere - but in some places more acutely than others and it’ll particularly affect the poor. 

Between 2010 and 2020, 15 times more people died from floods, droughts and storms in very vulnerable regions, including parts of Africa, South Asia and Central and South America, than in other parts of the world.

Extreme weather can have knock on effects in all sorts of unpredictable ways.

Floods in Thailand in 2011 hit semiconductor production, causing global industrial production to fall 2.5% and prices of hard disks to increase 80-190% 

Perhaps more predictably, floods, droughts and changes to the sea caused by climate change are already having an impact on global food supplies. 

The fertile farming lands of the Fens in eastern England provide some 30% of the UK’s fresh vegetables. The area is not just vital for food, but also to local people who rely on it for a living.

Cambridgeshire farmer Luke Palmer told ITV News that he’s seeing changes and it’s having an impact on how he farms.

“We are seeing increased rainfall events. Rain is coming very, very fast but inconsistently. Perversely, we’re also seeing increased lengths of time which are very, very dry,” he said. 

Scientists at Cambridge University are working closely with farmers in the region to find environmental solutions that work for them and their communities.

One of these researchers is Professor Emily Shuckburgh.

“It is really important that we both understand how to build resilience to those sorts of extreme weather events from a farming perspective but also to understand how farming can be part of the solution, how we can look to adapt our farming methods so they have a lower impact on the environment,” Prof Shuckburgh told ITV News. 

For Luke, that means having to try different crops and fertilisers, as well as changing the way he manages the amount of water supplying the land. 

Such adaptation is critical, says Dr Helen Adams, a lead author on the report from King's College, London.

“Climate change is really, right now affecting the things we care about and those impacts are going to get worse and accelerate in the future,” she says. “What the report is saying is we have to adapt now.” 

What that means is making what we do and how we live resilient to the effects of climate change. 

This might be early warning systems for floods and building up coastal defences; changing how fields are irrigated; or even planting trees in the right places to provide shade for people. 

In Egypt, for example, they’re reinforcing the coast amid rising sea levels. 

But ultimately driving down fossil fuel emissions is key to keeping a rise in temperature below 1.5 degrees. Doing this would reduce projected damage - yet we’re currently on course to overshoot that.

Back to the here and now, the conflict with oil and gas giant Russia puts a focus on the global need to transition to clean energy for some. 

“I think the very clear message to everyone is that you need to focus on domestic security of supply and renewables is absolutely the way forward,” COP26 President Alok Sharma MP told ITV News. 

Ultimately, scientists say some of the impacts of global warming are now irreversible, but it is still possible to avoid the worst of what climate change will bring.

Time, though, is running out.