Climate

As birds begin long journey north, climate-driven seasonal changes may leave late arrivals struggling to find food for young

Thursday is the spring equinox, when day and night are more or less equal all over the world. For naturalists, it marks the official start of spring, though judging by the birdsong in my Somerset garden, the season began several weeks ago.

As we eagerly await the return of swifts, swallows, warblers and flycatchers – all long-distance migrants from sub-Saharan Africa – we should reflect on how shifts in the world’s climate are causing them problems.

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The environmental group had said the lawsuit, over its role in a protest movement, could mean an end to its operations in the United States.

Non-profit, which will appeal decision, says lawsuits like this are aimed at ‘destroying the right to peaceful protest’

A jury in North Dakota has decided that the environmental group Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state nearly a decade ago.

Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based oil and gas company worth almost $70bn, had sued Greenpeace, alleging defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, claiming the organization “incited” people to protest by using a “misinformation campaign”.

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Climate models are the main tool climate scientists use to predict how Earth will respond to more heat-trapping pollutants in the atmosphere.

But what exactly is a climate model? Let’s start off easy by breaking down the phrase “climate model.” The “climate” is simply the weather averaged over a long period of time. A “model” in this case is a physical approximation of a complex system. So a climate model is an approximation of the Earth’s weather over a long period of time.

Since their debut in the 1960s, scientists have been improving and increasing the complexity of climate models (check out my History of Climate Models blog), and my colleagues and I at UCS continue to use them today. 

General circulation models 

When climate scientists reference a climate model, they are generally referring to a general circulation model (GCM), which is the main tool climate scientists use to simulate and understand how the Earth’s oceans, land, atmosphere, and cryosphere (a word to describe the planet’s sea and land ice) respond to changes in both its own internal dynamics as well as changes in heat-trapping pollutants.  

Just by looking at the name, you can see that a GCM is a model that simulates the circulation of Earth’s different physical systems like the atmosphere and ocean. What causes a circulation? In my blog on the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is the conveyor belt of water moving in the Atlantic Ocean, I discussed how regions around the equator are warmer than the poles due to different amounts of incoming solar radiation, that is, energy from the sun.

The Earth’s climate system doesn’t like imbalances in heat given the difference in density: Earth will do everything in its power to mix the cold poles and the hot tropics. The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans create circulations in order to mix temperature differences between regions; GCMs, or climate models, simulate these circulations quite well. 

The AMOC is an oceanic circulation that transports warm, fresh water from the Equator to the North Atlantic and cold, salty water from the North Atlantic to the Equatorial region. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/amoc.html. 

How exactly do GCMs simulate circulations? In order to model the climate system, a GCM uses a set of equations that explains how energy, momentum (e.g., moving air), and water interact and change within the atmosphere and oceans. GCMs simulate the Earth as a giant three-dimensional grid and calculate how different variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall, etc.) change at each grid point. The models further simulate how heat and other climate variables travel to and influence values in other grid points. 

A climate model splits the Earth into a three-dimensional grid, with calculations of momentum, heat, and water changes at each grid point. https://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/breakthroughs/climate_model/welcome.html A climate model is made up of many models 

In my blog on the history of climate models, I discussed how the first climate model back in the mid 20th century was actually just a single model of the atmosphere, which is just one part of the climate system. We know that there are other components of Earth’s climate besides the atmosphere, for example, the ocean, the land, and ice. Today’s climate models are so complex because they are made up of all of these components: atmosphere, land, ocean, and ice. We also have scientists who specialize in each component, allowing for further complexity and improvement in prediction of the Earth’s climate system. Today, a climate model is made up of smaller, component models of the atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere.

How exactly do all these different components of Earth’s climate system communicate with each other while a climate simulation is running? Through something called a coupler, which connects the different model components so that data can easily flow between the different sub-models. 

Modern-day climate models incorporate multiple subcomponents that are integrated by means of a coupler. 

Why do we need so many different models? Each model simulates something specific in its respective system. An ocean model calculates ocean circulation (like the AMOC) as well as ocean biogeochemistry, which is the science of how different molecules, such as carbon or nitrogen, cycle through the ocean. A land model will simulate:  

• vegetation  

• snow cover  

• soil moisture  

• evapotranspiration (process by which water moves from the land surface or vegetation to the atmosphere)  

• river flow

• and carbon storage 

A sea-ice model will calculate  

• reflection of incoming sunlight  

• air-sea heat exchange

• and moisture interaction between ice and water  

An atmospheric model calculates changes in  

• atmospheric circulation  

• radiation  

• clouds  

• and aerosols  

All of the different processes each climate sub-model will calculate. https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsearth-system-and-climate-models.  Model parameterizations 

You might be thinking, how could we possibly simulate clouds if they’re created from many tiny water droplets and ice crystals? If we were to simulate a cloud and all of its tiny droplets, our three-dimensional grid would have to be extremely detailed. Unfortunately, we don’t have the computer power to perform these kinds of detailed calculations (we also don’t fully understand the dazzling complexity of all the physics involved), so scientists developed something called a parameterization. A parameterization can be thought of as a model within a model.

Let’s say there’s a cloud in the eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean near the Galápagos Islands. This cloud exists under certain atmospheric conditions (temperature, moisture, wind) that support its existence.  

If we were to simulate this cloud in a GCM, these atmospheric conditions would first be reported to the cloud parameterization scheme from the main atmospheric model. The parameterization then calculates certain properties of the cloud, like how much sunlight the cloud reflects or how much cloud coverage there is in the cloud’s surroundings. The parameterization then reports back its findings to the main atmospheric model, which allows for continuous communication between the main atmospheric model and the parameterization to follow the cloud through its lifecycle. 

Many small-scale processes are parameterized in GCMs. Beyond clouds, air quality and turbulence are also parameterized. Turbulence is just the word for abrupt, small-scale changes in wind (think of being in a plane and suddenly experiencing a bump, or playing frisbee in a park and the frisbee changes direction or elevation as it suddenly experiences a gust of wind).

What are climate models used for?

The obvious use for climate models is to predict how the Earth’s climate may change given a “forcing” applied to Earth’s atmosphere. A forcing is typically a change in the composition of Earth’s gases in the atmosphere or a change in incoming solar radiation that leads to a radiative imbalance.  

What do I mean by this? A key feature of the Earth’s climate system is that it is always trying to maintain equilibrium—that is, the energy coming into the planet must always equal the energy leaving the planet. Why? Because the whole of the Earth’s climate system is subject to the laws of thermodynamics: energy in = energy out. But if the composition of gases in the atmosphere changes, then this can affect the energy balance.

When CO2 is added to the atmosphere, an energy imbalance is established, and the only way to reach energy equilibrium again is for the planet to warm up. This is why the Earth is warming in response to added CO2 in the atmosphere. 

In the 1960s, it started to become clear, with the help of climate models and theory, that fossil fuel use would warm the planet. The National Academy of Sciences released The Charney Report in 1979, which used climate models to predict, and warn the U.S. government, that the planet would warm due to fossil fuel emissions (though the U.S. government was warned about global warming as early as 1965). The authors estimated that the world would warm 3°C (5.4°F) given a doubling of atmospheric CO2 based on their climate model simulations in the 1970s. 

But this is just one example. You could use a climate model to ask any question that would affect the climate system: “What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted?” “What if the sun disappeared for five days?” “What if all atmospheric nitrogen was removed?” You can also construct a climate model with any arrangement of continents—for example, a climate model to represent Pangea Earth or a “Waterworld” planet with no continents at all. Some scientists even built a climate model to simulate the climate of Westeros from the Game of Thrones TV show.

Today, climate models are so complex that we can study how climate may be changing on a more regional level. In my research, I’ve run climate models to study how drought in the U.S. Northeast is changing with climate change, how the Earth may start to rapidly warm in the near-future given a change in oceanic warming, and how precipitation patterns might shift in the Southwestern U.S.   

Climate models will continue to become more complex and more accurate 

GCMs are complex, made up of multiple sub-models, and have a few parameterizations. They have been improved on for decades and are the combined work of climate scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists. They’re also incredibly accurate—model simulations run in the 1990s predicted how much the Earth would warm by 2025, which matches our current observations. 

In the future, climate models will become even more complex, perhaps resolving small-scale features, like clouds, rather than parameterizing them. We need these improved climate models to better predict and reduce uncertainty of regional climate change. The more scientists can equip society and decision makers with the best available climate science, the more we can sufficiently respond, adapt, and prepare for the changes underway.

Tariffs, tax credits and deregulation are among the industry’s top priorities.

Deciding where to live has always been a high-stakes financial decision, but a changing climate makes it even more critical. This guide will get you started.

Moves to roll back 31 pollution regulations risk public health and big annual healthcare savings, Guardian analysis shows

A push by Donald Trump’s administration to repeal a barrage of clean air and water regulations may deal a severe blow to US public health, with a Guardian analysis finding that the targeted rules were set to save the lives of nearly 200,000 people in the years ahead.

Last week, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provoked uproar by unveiling a list of 31 regulations it will scale back or eliminate, including rules limiting harmful air pollution from cars and power plants; restrictions on the emission of mercury, a neurotoxin; and clean water protections for rivers and streams.

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Here are some tips on how to defend your home against floodwaters, dangerous winds and wildfires.

The potential layoffs listed in documents reviewed by Democrats are part of the White House'’s broader push to shrink the federal government

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.

As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists – 75% of the research programme’s staff – could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology.

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A report from the World Meteorological Organization confirms that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial era.

Floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes occurred in hottest climate human society has ever experienced

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

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The Orbital and Morningside authors join Abi Daré, Roz Dineen and Kaliane Bradley in the running for the £10,000 award, for inspiring ways to ‘rise to the challenges of the climate crisis with hope and inventiveness’

Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht are among the writers in the running for the inaugural Climate fiction prize.

Harvey’s Orbital, her Booker-winning novel set on the International Space Station, and Obreht’s novel The Morningside, about refugees from an unnamed country, have both been shortlisted for the new prize, which aims to “celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis”.

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Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York is at the center of a Republican push to save a key part of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s climate agenda.

The fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate change is undeniable, yet corporate accountability remains a contested space. As the scientific evidence strengthens, courts around the world are increasingly considering the role of major fossil fuel companies in climate-related damages. Our latest research—published today in Environmental Research Letters—adds a critical piece to this legal and scientific puzzle by quantifying how emissions from the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers have directly contributed to sea level rise, both historically and in the centuries to come. 

Advancing Climate Attribution Science 

Attribution science has evolved to the point where we can now link certain climate impacts to emissions from identifiable entities, including corporations. Our study applies the well-established MAGICC7 climate model to trace heat-trapping emissions from the 122 largest fossil fuel and cement producers—the Carbon Majors—and assess their contributions to present-day and future global mean sea level rise. 

Our findings are stark: emissions traced to these industrial actors are responsible for 37-58% of the observed global surface temperature increase and 24-37% of historical sea level rise. Moreover, our research projects that these past emissions alone have all but guaranteed an additional 10 to 22 inches (0.26-0.55 meters) of sea level rise by 2300 —even if all emissions were to stop today. Importantly, this projected rise is in addition to the sea level rise driven by emissions from all other sources. This long-term impact reflects the delayed response of ocean temperatures and ice sheet dynamics to past greenhouse gas emissions. 

These results demonstrate that the damages we are experiencing today, and those that will continue to unfold for centuries, are directly tied to the actions of a small number of corporate actors whose products and deceptive conduct have been driving climate change. 

Why This Matters for Climate Litigation 

Climate litigation has become a powerful tool for holding corporations accountable for their role in fueling climate change. Cases such as Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell , Saúl Luciano Lliuya vs. RWE, and Delaware v. BP et al. are among those seeking to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for their contributions to climate change.  

Our study provides quantitative, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that may help inform litigation strategies in several ways: 

• Strengthening Causation Arguments: Courts require clear scientific evidence linking defendants’ actions to damages. Our research quantifies the specific share of global temperature rise and sea level rise that can be attributed to emissions from major fossil fuel producers, reinforcing claims of causation. 

• Informing Liability and Damages Assessments: The long-term costs of sea level rise, ranging from infrastructure damage to displacement, are expected to reach trillions of dollars. By establishing a direct link between historical emissions and projected sea level rise, our findings contribute to discussions on liability and potential financial responsibility. 

• Countering Industry Defenses: Fossil fuel companies often argue that climate change is the result of collective emissions rather than the responsibility of any particular entity. Our study results directly challenge this premise by demonstrating that a share of sea level rise can be attributed to the products traced to a limited number of companies. 

• Emphasizing the Urgency of Action: Delayed emissions reductions all but guarantee future damages. Our study highlights that earlier mitigation efforts could have significantly reduced today’s impacts—and further delays will only increase the severity of future sea level rise and its consequences. The longer action is delayed, the greater the avoidable consequences for coastal communities worldwide. 

The Role of Science in Accountability and Justice 

Scientific research has played a role in informing policy and its importance in litigation is growing. Our study builds on past attribution work that has already been cited in legal arguments worldwide. This growing body of evidence works hand in hand with research showing that fossil fuel companies have long understood the climate consequences of their extraction, production, promotion, and sale of oil, gas, and coal.  

Rather than taking responsibility, they have actively misled the public about the dangersand the harms we are now experiencing. The consequences of their actions are no longer speculative; they are quantifiable, they are unfolding before our eyes, and they are disproportionately affecting people and communities with the least capacity to withstand devastating climate impacts. 

Looking Ahead 

As legal battles over climate accountability continue, science will remain a cornerstone of these efforts. Our study contributes to the broader understanding of how industrial emissions have shaped global climate impacts and provides courts with data to inform their deliberations. 

While litigation alone won’t solve the climate crisis, it is one piece of the broader landscape of climate governance. Establishing clear scientific links between emissions and damages is a critical step in ensuring that those responsible are held accountable and that decision-makers have the evidence needed to act. 

The scientific reality is clear: emissions traced to major fossil fuel producers have played a significant role in driving present-day sea level rise, and the long-term consequences of these emissions will continue to shape our world for centuries to come. 

Accountability for past emissions should be a critical part in addressing climate change. But the first step in seeking accountability for the highest emitters, whether corporations or countries, is quantifying their contributions. While the pursuit of accountability should consider their role in creating and spreading disinformation and their deception around climate science and research, their contributions of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere are an important place to start. Here, I’ll describe the data currently available to quantify these emissions, what they tell us about the drivers of climate change, and how we can achieve accountability for its harms moving forward.  

Who are the Carbon Majors?  

The Carbon Majors are the largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, and a group to which 67.5% of all fossil fuel and cement emissions can be traced. To put a finer point on the immense impact of just a few organizations, more than one-third of these industrial emissions can be traced to just 26 companies. The Carbon Majors database includes emissions traced to investor-owned companies like ExxonMobil, BP, and Peabody; state-owned entities like SaudiAramco and Gazprom; and a handful of nation-states with dedicated fossil fuel and cement production, presently or historically, like China, Former Soviet Union.  

Earlier today, my colleague Shaina Sadai released a peer-reviewed study that links emissions traced to the Carbon Majors to present-day and future sea level rise. This study adds yet another example of how emissions from these entities are driving climate impacts globally. Previous UCS studies have already linked their emissions to increases in global average temperature, ocean acidification, and area burned by wildfires. When considered with the growing evidence of companies’ deception and disinformation, these studies paint a damning picture of how these companies shaped our world and the inequities that they’ve reinforced globally.  

These data also show that although humans have been emitting heat-trapping emissions into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, 50% of emissions traced to the Carbon Majors have been released since just 2000.  When visualizing data, clarifying the units used is critical. When it comes to emissions, this means distinguishing between cumulative historical (all the heat-trapping emissions they’ve ever emitted over time) and annual (all emissions each year). Both aggregations tell important stories that can help us to mitigate and adapt to climate change, but not specifying how the data are expressed is not only imprecise but can be deliberately misleading.  The data in the figure below show annual emissions measured in gigatons of CO2 per year.  

Source: UCS/Carbon Majors Dataset

As I wrote in an earlier blog that detailed the nitty gritty and backstory of this data, lawsuits and legal submissions worldwide cite the Carbon Majors Dataset to draw attention to the outsized role of fossil fuel companies in driving the climate crisis, including:  

• Lliuya vs RWE, where a Peruvian farmer is suing one of Europe’s largest emitters of heat trapping gases for its role in increasing the risk of a glacial lake outburst flooding, which threatens him and the entire community of Huaraz. This case uses the Carbon Majors Dataset to quantify RWE’s contribution to global historic emissions.  

• Greenpeace Italia vs ENI, where affected communities are suing to force ENI, Italy’s largest energy company, to reduce emissions and limit global warming. This case uses the Carbon Majors Dataset and source attribution research to underscore the outsized role of ENI in driving climate change. 

• People of California vs Big Oil, where California is suing ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and others for misleading advertising, failure to warn and fraudulent business practices. This filing uses these data to demonstrate that the contribution of heat-trapping gases traced to their defendants is quantifiable.  

• Multnomah County vs Big Oil, where the largest county in Oregon, home to Portland, is suing ExxonMobil and others for damages and adaptation costs following 2021’s unprecedented and deadly heatwave. This filing uses the Carbon Majors Dataset to show that emissions attributable to each entity are calculable using the amount, type, and emissions factor associated with each product.   

• Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines, which was petitioned to investigate the impact of climate change on human rights and the role of the ‘Carbon Majors’ in driving climate change and obstructing action. 

• InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, where Colombia and Chile requested an advisory opinion to clarify the state’s human rights obligations in light of climate change. UCS’ joint intervention used these data to highlight the role of a handful of corporations play in driving climate change.  

What about emissions from countries?  

When it comes to emissions, fossil fuel companies are not the only entities that have disproportionately contributed to the atmosphere’s ever increasing concentration of heat-trapping emissions. Some countries, like the United States, Russia, China and Germany, have also contributed an outsized amount of emissions to the atmosphere, and as a result should bear a proportionate amount of responsibility for addressing climate change and its impacts.   

The data presented below are from the Global Carbon Project and separate from the Carbon Majors data discussed above. This figure displays annual emissions by country, highlighting the massive historical contribution of the United States (nearly 25% of total global emissions), where several large Carbon Majors are headquartered. But more discouraging are the barely visible contributions (shown in purple) of many nations that are now bearing the brunt of climate change impacts —countries like Tonga and Pakistan, among many, many others. Plotted together, these data tell a powerful story about historical contributions and contextualize discussions around future responsibilities.  

Source: Global Carbon Project  What do these data mean for climate accountability?  

Emissions attributed to both the Carbon Majors and individual countries paint a picture of historical contributions that’s difficult to unsee—and inspires a call for accountability.  

In the US, states, counties, and communities are seeking accountability through the courts. These lawsuits primarily focus on fossil fuel companies’ deception and disinformation campaigns that delayed climate action for years and continues to pollute our public discourse.  While industry, trade groups, and their political allies have fought to dismiss the suits, courts across the country, including the Supreme Court just last week, have continued to affirm the right to seek accountability through the courts.  

Internationally, high emitting countries continue to benefit from their historical emissions at the expense of many emerging economies that bear the brunt of climate impacts but have contributed the least amount of heat-trapping emissions. In multilateral agreements, powerful countries have resisted and slowed the adoption of mechanisms for accountability sought by more vulnerable nations.    

At COP27 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries around the world established a Loss and Damage Fund to aid developing countries who are most vulnerable to climate change but have contributed the least to the atmosphere. Countries initially pledged more than 700 million dollars to the fund. While this appears to be an entry point in the path toward accountability, this amount is far below the estimated need of 300 billion annually by 2035 – just 0.2% of what is needed  Further, in early March, the US announced its withdrawal from the Loss and Damage Fund.  

But these data don’t tell the full story, particularly regarding the environmental racism and injustice wrought by the fossil fuel and high-emitting countries. This is especially evident in Cancer Alley in southern Louisiana, where a high density of petrochemical plants and refineries with scarce regulation and willful neglect, have led to elevated rates of cancer and other health issues, a burden particularly borne by Black residents.  

The Trump Administration has already reneged on the US’ bare minimum commitments  to address issues of climate justice. We’ve seen fossil fuel industry leaders and climate deniers put in positions of authority. The US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement and stopped federal scientists from engaging with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global scientific body.  

These data—both for countries and major carbon producers—tell a clear story about the history of human climate pollution, and the responsibilities of large emitters to act as the impacts of climate change grow increasingly severe. The need to hold them accountable, and guarantee they take up that responsibility, must guide our work every day.  

In a new study released today, UCS attributes substantial temperature and sea level rise to emissions traced to the largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers. And for the first time, we extend sea level projections into the future, quantifying how past heat-trapping emissions from the fossil fuel industry will impact the world for centuries to come. 

The world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers have known for decades that their products cause climate change, yet they spread disinformation to misinform the public and have profited as people around the world have suffered from ever-worsening climate impacts. Previous attribution research published by my Union of Concerned Scientists colleagues have allowed us to draw causal connections between sources of heat-trapping emissions and resulting impacts, like present day increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, air temperatures, sea levels, ocean acidification, and wildfire burned area. At the same time, social science research has shed light on what the industry knew and when they knew it.  

In our new study, we bring together those two lines of research to understand what would have happened if fossil fuels had been phased out following key developments throughout history. We found that heat-trapping emissions traced to major carbon polluters have contributed to nearly half of present day surface air temperature rise and nearly a third to the observed global mean sea level rise. And critically, we demonstrate how these emissions will cause harm for centuries to come.  

The past haunts the future 

Our new research quantifies how sea levels will rise for hundreds of years as a result of past emissions traced to products produced and sold by the Carbon Majors. By comparing scenarios, with and without industrial fossil fuel development and its associated emissions, we find that past emissions from the Carbon Majors are projected to lead to an additional 0.26-0.55 m (10-21 inches) of sea level rise by the year 2300. While the magnitude of future sea level rise will depend on how emissions evolve this century our results attributing additional future sea level rise to past emissions are largely unchanged, regardless of what future emissions trajectories the world follows.

If the Carbon Majors emissions had ceased after 1990, the long-term sea level rise just from past emissions traced to their products is projected to be an additional 0.17-0.35 m (6-14 inches), showing how just a few decades of emissions can have a big impact on the future. Every delay in phasing out fossil fuels will burden future generations who need to adapt to rising seas and recover from loss and damage due to sea level impacts. 

The world that could have been 

To represent versions of the world that could have been if different actions had been taken and the world had acted in a timely manner to address the harms of fossil fuels, we develop several different counterfactual scenarios. We use the newly updated Carbon Majors database which quantifies annual emissions associated with coal, oil, gas, and cement production by each of the 122 largest fossil fuel and cement producers from 1854-2022. We explore 3 counterfactual scenarios, where we remove the emissions from these companies starting in a particular year: 

• 1854 counterfactual: A world where industrial fossil fuel development never occurred. In this scenario we remove emissions from the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers starting in the year 1854. This is the earliest time period we can reliably know how much fossil fuels were being produced by different companies. 

• 1950 counterfactual: A world where fossil fuels had been phased out when the industry knew that fossil fuels were harming the climate system. In this scenario we remove fossil fuel industry emissions after 1950 when research has shown that companies were internally aware of the harms of their products. 

• 1990 counterfactual: A world where the international community had acted swiftly to phase out fossil fuels at the start of international efforts to address climate change. In this scenario we remove industry emissions after 1990, when the international community was first forming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

In each set of simulations, we subtract emissions traced to the largest producers from the full emissions that actually occurred, and use a climate model, the MAGICC model, to determine what would have happened if the emissions from these companies never entered the atmosphere. MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change) is a publicly accessible model that been widely used, including in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports to understand how future climate could respond to different heat-trapping emissions scenarios. 

Across all scenarios, we find that the world would have been cooler and the sea levels lower if fossil fuel emissions had been phased out earlier. We find that heat-trapping emissions traced to the Carbon Majors during 1854-2020 have contributed to as much as 57% to present day surface air temperature rise and as much as 37% to the observed global mean sea level rise. In the 1950 counterfactual scenario, modern temperatures (averaged from 1990-2020) would have been 0.41-0.66°C above the preindustrial (1850-1900) average and global sea levels would have risen by 0.12-0.17 m. This implies that these companies are responsible for as much as 57% of the present-day air temperature rise and as much as 36% of the present day sea level rise in this scenario. Impacts are similar in the 1854 and 1950 counterfactuals due to the relatively small amount of heat-trapping emissions released 1854-1950 relative to the enormous amount of emissions released after 1950. 

In the 1990 counterfactual, the Carbon Majors are responsible for as much as 26% of the present-day air temperature rise and as much as 17% of the present-day sea level rise. The 1990 scenario has full historical emissions from 1854-1990 and then emissions from the fossil fuel industry removed 1990-2020. The climate impacts from emissions in recent decades are not yet fully realized, meaning this scenario underestimates the industry’s responsibility.   

How does this study compare to what was found in previous UCS research? 

The findings of our new research corroborate those of previous UCS studies, affirming the strength of our methods and accuracy of models used. By using the newest available emissions data for the Carbon Majors, this study extends this type of attribution research to present day. The main advancement of this particular study is the look to the future, which the updated methodology allowed us to do. 

This research uses the same climate modeling approach used in the 6th IPCC report (2021) to project future temperatures under different emissions scenarios. Previous UCS research had used methods derived from the 5th IPCC report, released in 2014.  

One of the biggest differences between these two approaches is how they determine sea level rise. The previously used model was only backward looking, meaning it could describe sea level rise in the past. The new model accounts for different drivers of sea level change, including ice sheet models and glacier models, capturing dynamics that were not happening in the recent past and allowing us to project into the future. 

Using research to motivate action 

Our research shows that emissions traced to the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement manufacturers have caused global temperatures and sea levels to rise, and that sea levels will continue to rise for hundreds of years in response to heat-trapping emissions which have already occurred. The fossil fuel industry knew by the 1950s that their products were causing climate change and at any time in the intervening decades they could have changed their business model to phaseout fossil fuels, yet they chose to keep producing, and profiting from, these harmful products. These actions have led to worsening climate change which will impact people in the future for centuries to come. 

 
As the people around the world experience the devastating impacts of stronger storms, more destructive wildfires, sea level rise, and other detrimental changes they are calling for those who are responsible to be held accountable. Communities around the world are pursuing accountability through court cases based on the fact that the fossil fuel industry knowingly deceived the public while producing products that would increase risks of climate change. Research that can trace specific climate impacts to the heat-trapping emissions produced by these companies can help inform this litigation. Researchers can help play a role by designing research questions that inform global action. It is long past time the world to phaseout fossil fuels and to get accountability for the harms that have occurred—and will occur in the coming years. The time to take action is now. 

Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, says changes to be announced today are about giving people ‘hope of work in the future’

Q: Why have you changed your mind on this?

Badenoch says she has not changed her mind. As a member of the government, she abided by collective responsibility. She says in government she regularly questioned the case for net zero.

The person who’s been consistent in all this is me.

I’m not going to pretend that I won’t have critics … This is politics. Being a politician is about being criticised.

What I’m asking people to do is listen to what I’m saying. I am not doing what all the other parties are doing. We are changing the way we do things.

That’s not how it works. You can’t just pull [a date] out of the air. And what we did was pick a target and then start thinking of how to get there.

We need to start thinking about it in a different way. How does this impact families? How is business going to help us deliver? And that’s what the policy commissions are going to do.

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Ana Toni also criticises the UK’s plans to slash overseas aid to fund defence spending

Countries looking to boost their national security through rearmament or increased defence spending must also bolster their climate efforts or face more wars in the future, one of the leaders of the next UN climate summit has warned.

Some countries could decide to include climate spending in their defence budgets, suggested Ana Toni, Brazil’s chief executive of the Cop30 summit.

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More than 1,000 chemists, biologists and other scientists could be laid off under a plan to dismantle the Office of Research and Development.

Nonprofit groups have sued the agency to get access to grants approved by Congress to fund climate and clean energy projects across the country.