‘Hothouse Earth’ fear of climate scientists

EARTH may be on a runaway trajectory towards a “hothouse” climate which will leave huge swathes of the planet uninhabitable and create 200ft sea level rises, an international team of scientists has warned.

A new review found that even if targets to cap global warming at a rise of 2C are met, it may already be too late because of a domino effect of factors such as the ongoing reduction in Arctic sea ice and the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Lead author Prof Will Steffen, of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said Earth was reaching a tipping point where it would be impossible to control devastating climate change.

“Human emissions of greenhouse gas are not the sole determinant of temperature on Earth,” he said. “Our study suggests that humaninduced global warming of 2C may trigger other Earth system processes, often called ‘feedbacks’, that can drive further warming even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases.”

“These… can potentially act like a row of dominoes,” said co-author Johan Rockström. “Once one is pushed over, it pushes Earth towards another. It may be very difficult or impossible to stop the whole row of dominoes from tumbling over. Places on Earth will become uninhabitable if ‘Hothouse Earth’ becomes the reality,” he added.

Commenting on the findings, Dr Phil Williamson, a climate researcher from the University of East Anglia, said: “In the context of the summer of 2018, this is definitely not a case of crying wolf, raising a false alarm. The wolves are now in sight.”