Climate Change
In 1978, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a cover story titled “Is mankind warming the Earth?” The answer then, as now, was an “unqualified ‘yes.’” Between July 2023 and June 2024, the average global temperature was over 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial average, the result of over a century of rampant fossil fuel use and associated greenhouse gas emissions. This warming has resulted in global climate change. The Bulletin covers all aspects of the causes and wide-ranging impacts of this existential crisis, from glacier retreat and sea level rise to drought, extreme weather, and intense wildfires. We also investigate the most promising ways to slow and eventually halt global warming, probing uncertainties and irreversible tipping points in the Earth’s climate and biosphere that threatens all life on Earth.
