Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Thursday night rolled out some of his most apocalyptic climate rhetoric to date declaring “the era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived.”
He went on to lament how “terrifying” it is seeing children “swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat.”
The veteran Portuguese socialist painted his picture of a world in peril during a streamed speech from U.N. headquarters in New York, returning once more to a theme of climate doom he has used almost without respite since he took office.
File/U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urges world leaders in 2022 to take “credible” new action to curb climate change, warning that efforts so far fall short of what’s needed to avert catastrophe. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)
He said “short of a mini ice age” over coming days, some scientists estimate July 2023 would shatter records across the board.
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying, and it is just the beginning,” Guterres outlined. “The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.
“The consequences are clear and they are tragic — children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat.
“For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer.”
Guterres spoke as a separate analysis for the month, published Friday by Leipzig University climate scientist Karsten Haustein, estimated July could possibly finish 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the 2019 record.
Dr Haustein predicted not only would that make it the warmest month on record, but potentially in “thousands if not tens of thousands of years.”
“We may have to go back all the way to the Eemian warm period (about 120,000 years ago) to find similarly warm conditions,” he said, ABC News reports.
File/U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres disembarks his private jet at Cornwall Airport Newquay, near Newquay, Cornwall, on June 12, 2021, to attend the G7 summit and address urgent climate matters. (BEN STANSALL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
File/Guterres sits in a personal helicopter during his visit to flood-affected areas in Pakistan’s Sindh province on September 10, 2022. He said developing nations were paying a “horrific price” for the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. (MUHAMMAD DAUD/AFP via Getty Images)
“But since paleo-temperature records do not provide high enough temporal resolution, we cannot say with certainty that this July hasn’t been hotter during the peak of the current interglacial [period].”
This is not the first time Guterres has warned the world of impending climate doom.
Just last November he told participants in the COP27 climate summit of impending “climate chaos” due to humanity’s “fossil fuel addiction,” as Breitbart News reported.
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” the career diplomat diplomat insisted during his Cop27 opening speech in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
“How will we answer when baby 8 billion is old enough to ask: What did you do for our world and for our planet when you had the chance?” he asked.
Previous to that in 2019 the secretary-general said climate-related devastation is striking the planet on a weekly basis and global action must be undertaken immediately with U.N. agencies in the lead, a message echoed by climate protesters.
File/A group of teenage protesters, part of the global movement “Fridays for Future” against climate change, gather in front of the White House in Washington DC on May 24, 2019. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are here because the world is facing a grave climate emergency,” Guterres told a two-day Abu Dhabi climate meeting ahead of a Climate Action Summit in New York.
“Climate disruption is happening now… It is progressing even faster than the world’s top scientists have predicted,” the U.N. secretary general said. “It is outpacing our efforts to address it. Climate change is running faster than we are.”