Is the world being destroyed?

Describe the specific steps we need to take to solve the problem.

Describe the costs of the solution; what will you sacrifice, what you will ask other people to sacrifice.

In addition, you also need to describe a political process (...) There needs to be a process of compromise and a way to get acceptance across societies.

What we have here is panic; an exaggerated fear with no solutions offered and no way to reach them.

- Forest cover is increasing in the US (we are adding forests) and Europe and Russia.

Panic is not part of this.

What exactly are you proposing?

I'm not "proposing" anything. I'm suggesting that from what I know of humans, good luck on reaching any international consensus or effective compromise.

This is the worse type of ideological extremism; it attacks everything and stands for nothing.

There are no solutions, no progress, no sacrifice, no trade-offs.

This is just page after page of hatred for humanity.

I would love to have a thoughtful conversation on what a reasoned response to climate change would look like.

I think the greatest challenge is balancing the urgent need to cut carbon emissions with the real needs of the developing world.

On a smaller scale is the needs within economies, raising the price of gas and oil would reduce emissions, but would have a disproportionate effect on working class people and hurt jobs.

Abstract:

Large areas of tropical forests have been lost through deforestation, resulting in fragmented forest landscapes. However, the dynamics of forest fragmentation are still unknown, especially the critical forest edge areas, which are sources of carbon emissions due to increased tree mortality. We analyzed the changes in forest fragmentation for the entire tropics using high-resolution forest cover maps. We found that forest edge area increased from 27 to 31% of the total forest area in just 10 years, with the largest increase in Africa. The number of forest fragments increased by 20 million with consequences for connectivity of tropical landscapes. Simulations suggest that ongoing deforestation will further accelerate forest fragmentation. By 2100, 50% of tropical forest area will be at the forest edge, causing additional carbon emissions of up to 500 million MT carbon per year. Thus, efforts to limit fragmentation in the world’s tropical forests are important for climate change mitigation.

They are pointing out that fragmentation is an important metric (as well as simply area).

If you want to do something productive, support these payments from the US government (and increasingly from international corporations) to preserve the tropical forests.

Pointing this out is certainly useful but if fragmentation still continues it won't be any different than the warnings about greenhouse gases that have been ignored for decades.

Saying that we are not making progress, or that this hasn't been on the forefront of the international stage for decades is simply untrue.

In Carbon Brief’s analysis, overall CO2 emissions are around 18% lower than they would have been, if underlying factors had not changed, and 14% lower than their 2005 peak. No single factor is responsible for more than a third of total declines in US CO2.

Increases in gas electricity generation is the largest driver, accounting for 33% of the total emissions reduction in 2016. Gas is far from zero-carbon, but reduces CO2 in the US because it mostly displaces high-carbon coal.

Wind generation was responsible for 19% of emissions reduction, while reduced electricity use – mostly in the industrial sector – was responsible for 18%. Reduced industrial CO2 emissions from non-electric sources, such as on-site burning of oil or natural gas, accounted for an additional 7%

Other important factors include reduced miles driven, increased vehicle fuel economy and lower emissions from air travel via reductions in CO2 per passenger mile. Solar power accounts for a small, but growing part of emissions reductions, representing 3% of the reduction in 2016.

"The main thing we found is that almost everywhere we looked, and in almost every sector, greenhouse gas emissions just kept on rising, right up to the beginning of COVID-19, when we had the highest greenhouse gas emissions we've ever had," Prof. Wiedmann says.

"This is despite the fact there are more than 20 countries that have reduced their emissions. It's when you take this bird's eye view of the total emissions that you see that those reductions barely make a difference."

Prof. Wiedmann says he knew that emissions were still growing, but he was surprised that moves towards renewable energy have not made larger dents in the emissions.

"The results are quite sobering, we just haven't been able to bend the curve. Yes, we have slowed the growth of emissions a bit when compared to the decade leading up to 2010, but if we want to meet the Paris Agreement target by 2050, then we have to get emissions down really quickly."