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Major climate indicators set 'alarming' records in 2021, the U.N. says, "bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe"

CBS News · Li Cohen · last updated

The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization issued yet another grim report about the state of our planet this week. In 2021, four of the seven major climate indicators – a set of parameters that hold key information about climate change – set “alarming” new records.

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State of Play

What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet. 

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