Saturday, April 22 marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern green movement in 1970. This is the 48th Earth Day.
This global occasion is now recognised in more than 193 countries, and events are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection.
On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, China, and around 120 other countries.
This signing satisfied a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.
That was of course before US President, Donald Trump took office, and stated his disbelief in man-made climate change, regardless of the irrefutable evidence to prove it.
In 1895, Svante Arrhenius first calculated the impact that increasing carbon dioxide could have on Earth’s temperature.
Since then, scientists have further refined their understanding of the greenhouse effect and the role our rising carbon emissions are having on it.
Symbolic figure
From the first Earth Day in 1970, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen 24 percent.
It has now crept over 400 parts per million, and we are unlikely to se it dip below that symbolic figure within our lifetimes, according to scientists.
Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries, and that means that the impacts of our emissions today will linger long into the future.
Chief among the impacts is the rise in the global temperature. That’s why countries around the world have agreed to limit that warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial temperatures.
To keep track of how close the world is getting to that crucial threshold, scientists at Climate Central in the US have combined the monthly global temperature analyses from NOAA and NASA.
They have compared that average with an earlier baseline from 1881-1910 – the earliest baseline based on reliable, global data.
March 2017 was 1.34C above that baseline, and the 627th consecutive month with the global temperature above that average.
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