‘We need to stop using the sky as an open sewer’: Former US Vice-President Al Gore on unprecedented climate danger

CLIMATE DANGERS ARE ACCELERATING

Gore said the world pumps 175 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere daily.

The accumulated amount now traps as much extra heat as would be released by 800,000 first-generation atomic bombs exploding on Earth every day, he said.

The past 11 years – from 2015 through 2025 – were the warmest on record globally.

Gore said scientists predict this year will be the hottest yet, with 2027 likely to eclipse that record, as a “super El Nino” pushes temperatures even higher.

At the same time, the climate crisis is intensifying the water cycle, with warmer oceans sending more water vapour into the atmosphere. That is contributing to extreme downpours known as “rain bombs”, punctuated by longer and deeper droughts that threaten agriculture, he said.

Among the most serious threats is the accelerating loss of the world’s ice, with the devastation in Nepal a stark reminder that the climate crisis is no longer a distant danger.

Gore warned that 80 per cent of the ice in the Himalayas was projected to disappear by the end of the century unless the world changes course.

Greenland is losing about 30 million tonnes of ice every hour, he said, while Antarctica is also increasingly contributing to sea-level rise.

The combination of rising seas and stronger storm surges poses a threat to low-lying areas, including Singapore, he noted.

Gore also pointed to the growing danger posed by the combination of extreme heat and humidity, which could make larger parts of the world physiologically uninhabitable.

World Health Organization climate experts have warned that within the next 25 years, more than one billion climate refugees could cross international borders “to escape unlivable conditions in the places they’ve always called home”.