Must read – A warning from 15,000 world scientists

25 years ago, in 1992, 1700 independent scientists already told us in their “World Scientists – Warning to Humanity – 1st Notice”. And yet, it seems that was not sufficient. This month, a second notice was submitted, this time by about 15,000 worldwide scientists. And the message is still quite clear: “the world is going toward catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery” and we have little time to act before avoiding this.

This may sound like an unrealistic, even irrational alarmist message. But it is worth reminding that, since its beginning, science work (and scientists) is beforehand based on observations, facts, interpretations with evaluation of uncertainties, implementing models that are then continuously and thoroughly evaluated  by confronting with observations.

This article is relatively short and very simple to read. No need to be an expert, every citizen can easily understand all the messages. I think this is the duty to each of us to take some minutes for reviewing it, and then thinking about our actions. Especially, the causes are nowadays well identified: rapid population growth, deforestation, agricultural production, and rising greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that has triggered and driven our climate change.

For this last one, in spite of continuous denial and unjustified claims (especially in the USA), the odds from IPCC and COP23 are pretty clear: CO2 – Carbon dioxide and CH4 – Methane amount in the atmosphere are historically unique, and the emissions keep increasing. Some of these increases are also even observable from space.

A positive sign: stratospheric O3 – Ozone hole over Antarctic is recovering. If our actions have allowed to create and then solved this problem, then we can still do something, at every level, about the greenhouse gases.

Several journals and websites forwarded this article. But I have the feeling yet it could reach more and more people and lead to further discussions and actions in our societies. Hope this is not too late…

More information?

• Ripple et al., 2017: Full articles World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, 1st and 2nd notices here. You can also endorse the 2017 article here
• European Space Agency (ESA): CO2 – Carbon dioxide and CH4 – Methane on the rise here
• CO2 – Carbon dioxide WebPage here
• CH4 – Methane WebPage Here