YCLOAK

Colombia will try to control its population of more than 100 hippopotamuses, descendants of animals illegally brought to the country by late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s, through surgical sterilization, the transfer of hippos to other countries and possibly euthanasia, the government said Thursday.

The hippos, which spread from Escobar’s estate into nearby rivers where they flourished, have no natural predators in Colombia and have been declared an invasive species that could upset the ecosystem.

Authorities estimate there are 169 hippos in Colombia, especially in the Magdalena River basin, and that if no measures are taken, there could be 1,000 by 2035.

Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said the first stage of the plan will be the surgical sterilization of 40 hippos per year and this will begin next week.

The procedure is expensive — each sterilization costs about $9,800 — and entails risks for the hippopotamus, including allergic reactions to anesthesia or death, as well as risks to the animal health personnel, according to the ministry. The hippos are dispersed over a large area and are territorial and often aggressive.

Experts say sterilization alone is not enough to control the growth of the invasive species, which is why the government is arranging for the possible transfer of hippos to other countries, a plan that was announced in March.

Muhamad said Colombian officials have contacted authorities in Mexico, India and the Philippines, and are evaluating sending 60 hippos to India.

“We are working on the protocol for the export of the animals,” she said. “We are not going to export a single animal if there is no authorization from the environmental authority of the other country.”

As a last resort to control the population, the ministry is creating a protocol for euthanasia.

A group of hippos was brought in the 1980s to Hacienda Nápoles, Escobar’s private zoo that became a tourist attraction after his death in 1993. Most of the animals live freely in rivers and reproduce without control.

Residents of nearby Puerto Triunfo have become used to hippos sometimes roaming freely about the town.

Scientists warn that the hippos’ feces change the composition of rivers and could impact the habitat of local manatees and capybaras.
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Climate change threatens to reverse decades of progress toward better health and well-being, particularly in the most vulnerable communities, according to a new report by the U.N. weather agency.

In its annual State of Climate Services report, the World Meteorological Organization on Thursday warned that the climate crisis was generating a global health crisis and said that many ill effects of climate change could be tempered by adaptation and prevention measures.

WMO said climate change was causing the world to warm at a faster rate than at any other point in recorded history.

“There is no more return back to the good old milder climate of the last century.  Actually, we are heading towards a warmer climate for the coming decades, anyhow,” said Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary-general.

“Unless we are successful in phasing out this negative trend” by limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius, “we will see this situation getting worse,” he said.

The report finds countries in Africa and southern Asia are most at risk from climate change, which it says is fueling vector-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria, even in places where they were not seen before.

“And we are creating conditions for more noncommunicable diseases like lung cancer and chronic respiratory infections also, because of the bad quality of the air that we breathe,” said Maria Neira, director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization. “The extreme weather events obviously will have dramatic consequences for the health of the people.”

Taalas noted that food insecurity also was growing, and that increasingly more frequent heat waves were worsening the impacts of extreme weather events.

“For example, in the Horn of Africa, during the past three years, we have had very severe food insecurity situations, which was related to both heat and drought,” he said. “And quite often in these episodes when we have heat waves, we have also very poor air quality.”

WMO said extreme heat causes more deaths than any other extreme weather event. It estimated that excessive heat killed approximately 489,000 people a year from 2000 to 2019, with 45% of these deaths in Asia and 36% in Europe.

It noted that heat waves also worsen air pollution, “which is already responsible for an estimated 7 million premature deaths every year and is the fourth-biggest killer by health risk factor.”

“There is a significant challenge by the health community to address climate change,” said Joy Shumake-Guillemot, who leads the WHO/WMO Joint Office on Climate and Health.

“We see major gaps, particularly in early-warning systems for climate-related impacts, such as extreme heat,” where only half of countries are now getting the message “about how dangerous heat conditions might be affecting them.”

She said the report focused on the power and opportunity of using climate science and services to better inform national policies.

However, while 74% of national meteorological services are providing data to the health systems in countries around the world, “only about 23% of ministries of health are really using this information in systematic ways in health surveillance systems to track the diseases that we know are influenced by climate,” she said, adding that climate services had to be further developed to address these gaps.

WMO chief Taalas agreed with this assessment, noting that climate information and services can play an important role in helping states manage extreme weather events, predict health risks and save lives.

For example, he said early-warning systems for extreme heat and for pollen to help allergy sufferers were very important. Unfortunately, he said, well-functioning early-warning services in African countries and other states were very limited.

“One of the sectors where African countries do not have services are these health services, and many African countries are not able to provide heat warnings for their populations, and their authorities have limitations in coping with such warnings,” he said.

To rectify this lapse, Taalas said WMO has established a major early-warning services program to help countries in Africa and elsewhere improve their management of environmental health and climate services.

“From our perspective,” he said, “it is very smart to prevent pandemics, and we can do so by improving the early warning services.

“This would prevent … the human casualties and we could minimize the economic losses by having proper early-warning services in place … and that is what we are very much promoting.”
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that leaders have “a moral, ethical and societal duty” to protect people from the dangers posed by artificial intelligence, as she leads the Biden administration’s push for a global AI roadmap.

Analysts, in commending the effort, say human oversight is crucial to preventing the weaponization or misuse of this technology, which has applications in everything from military intelligence to medical diagnosis to making art.

“To provide order and stability in the midst of global technological change, I firmly believe that we must be guided by a common set of understandings among nations,” Harris said. “And that is why the United States will continue to work with our allies and partners to apply existing international rules and norms to AI, and work to create new rules and norms.”

Harris also announced the founding of the government’s AI Safety Institute and released draft policy guidance on the government’s use of AI and a declaration of its responsible military applications.

Just days earlier, President Joe Biden – who described AI as “the most consequential technology of our time” – signed an executive order establishing new standards, including requiring that major AI developers report their safety test results and other critical information to the U.S. government.

AI is increasingly used for a wide range of applications. For example: on Wednesday, the Defense Intelligence Agency announced that its AI-enabled military intelligence database will soon achieve “initial operational capability.”

And perhaps on the opposite end of the spectrum, some programmer decided to “train an AI model on over 1,000 human farts so it would learn to create realistic fart sounds.”

Like any other tool, AI is subject to its users’ intentions and can be used to deceive, misinform or hurt people – something that billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk stressed on the sidelines of the London summit, where he said he sees AI as “one of the biggest threats” to society. He called for a “third-party referee.”

Earlier this year, Musk was among the more than 33,000 people to sign an open letter calling on AI labs “to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

“Here we are, for the first time, really in human history, with something that’s going to be far more intelligent than us,” said Musk, who is looking at creating his own generative AI program. “So it’s not clear to me we can actually control such a thing. But I think we can aspire to guide it in a direction that’s beneficial to humanity. But I do think it’s one of the existential risks that we face and it’s potentially the most pressing one.”

This is also something industry leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have told U.S. lawmakers in testimony before congressional committees earlier this year.

“My worst fears are that we cause significant – we, the field, the technology, the industry – cause significant harm to the world. I think that could happen in a lot of different ways,” he told lawmakers at a Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16.

That’s because, said Jessica Brandt, policy director for the AI and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution, while “AI has been used to do pretty remarkable things” – especially in the field of scientific research – it is limited by its creators.

“It’s not necessarily doing something that humans don’t know how to do, but it’s making discoveries that humans would be unlikely to be able to make in any meaningful timeframe, because they can just perform so many calculations so quickly,” she told VOA on Zoom.

And, she said, “AI is not objective, or all-knowing. There’s been plenty of studies showing that AI is really only as good as the data that the model is trained on and that the data can have or reflect human bias. This is one of the major concerns.”

Or, as AI Now Executive Director Amba Kak said earlier this year in a magazine interview about AI systems: “The issue is not that they’re omnipotent. It is that they’re janky now. They’re being gamed. They’re being misused. They’re inaccurate. They’re spreading disinformation.”

Analysts say these government and tech officials don’t need a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather an alignment of values – and critically, human oversight and moral use.

“It’s OK to have multiple different approaches, and then also, where possible, coordinate to ensure that democratic values take root in the systems that govern technology globally,” Brandt said.

Industry leaders tend to agree, with Mira Murati, Open AI’s chief technology officer, saying: “AI systems are becoming a part of everyday life. The key is to ensure that these machines are aligned with human intentions and values.”

Analysts watching regulation say the U.S. is unlikely to come up with one, coherent solution for the problems posed by AI.

“The most likely outcome for the United States is a bottom-up patchwork quilt of executive branch actions,” said Bill Whyman, a senior adviser in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Unlike Europe, the United States is not likely to pass a broad national AI law over the next few years. Successful legislation is likely focused on less controversial and targeted measures like funding AI research and AI child safety.” 
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The World Health Organization warns that disease outbreaks, malnutrition and non-communicable diseases are rising in war-torn Sudan, with devastating consequences for millions of people forced to flee their homes in the face of escalating violence. 

Since conflict erupted April 15, more than 4.6 million people have become newly displaced inside Sudan. The number, added to the more than three million who already were displaced within the country before the current conflict, makes Sudan home to the world’s largest internally displaced crisis. 

“The health system in Sudan is stretched to breaking point as capacities decline in the face of mounting needs,” said Ni’ma Saeed Abid, WHO representative in Sudan, speaking Tuesday in Port Sudan.

“Access to health care continues to be limited due to insecurity, displacement, and shortages of medicines and medical supplies, placing millions of Sudanese at risk of severe illness or death from preventable and treatable causes,” he said. 

The WHO says that 70 to 80 percent of health facilities are “non-functional in conflict hotspots.” It has verified 60 attacks against health care and personnel, leading to 34 deaths and 38 injuries. 

“Conflict and the consequent massive displacement have driven the population further into a state of widespread malnutrition, with the lives of children hanging in the balance,” said Abid.

“Cholera, measles, dengue and malaria are circulating in several states. And a combination of any of these diseases with malnutrition can be lethal,” he warned. 

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates, 20.3 million people, or 40 percent of Sudan’s population, are facing hunger. Estimates show 4.6 million children, pregnant and nursing mothers are malnourished; 3.4 million children under five are acutely malnourished; and 700,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which can lead to death. 

“I have seen two or three children put on the same bed for treatment for acute severe malnutrition because of the high number of cases,” Abid said. “And all these children because of malnutrition are susceptible for infection.” 

Since September 26, Sudan has declared outbreaks of cholera in Gedaref, Khartoum and South Kordofan states, with suspected cases reported from Al Jazirah and Kassal states. 

“And there is a possibility of further expansion because of the quality of water supply, because of the sanitation and because of displacement,” Abid said. “We are expecting that we may see more states affected, more people affected.” 

As of last week, the WHO reports 1,962 suspected cholera cases with 30 lab-confirmed cases and 72 associated deaths. It estimates more than 3.1 million people are at risk of cholera until the end of December.

The World Health Organization has stockpiled drugs and essential supplies for the treatment of cholera patients. It has deployed 14 rapid response teams into the affected areas, strengthened the country’s surveillance and early warning systems, and is getting ready to receive oral cholera vaccines for a campaign in Gedaref state.

More than six months have passed since the start of the crisis in Sudan. While efforts to contain some of the worst impacts of the disaster are critical, they are not enough. 

Martin Griffiths, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, says only peace will stem the humanitarian tragedy that continues to unfold unabated in the country. 

In a statement over the weekend, he welcomed the resumption of peace talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, saying they couldn’t have started soon enough. 

“Thousands of people have been killed or injured. … Aid workers are hamstrung by fighting, insecurity, and red tape, making the operating environment in Sudan extremely challenging,” he said.

“We need the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to break the bureaucratic logjam. We need them to fully adhere to international humanitarian law and to secure safe, sustained and unhindered access to people in need,” he said. 
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Digital officials, tech company bosses and researchers are converging Wednesday at a former codebreaking spy base near London to discuss and better understand the extreme risks posed by cutting-edge artificial intelligence. 

The two-day summit focuses on so-called frontier AI — the latest and most powerful systems that take the technology right up to its limits, but could come with as-yet-unknown dangers. They’re underpinned by foundation models, which power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard and are trained on vast pools of information scraped from the internet. 

Some 100 people from 28 countries are expected to attend Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s two-day AI Safety Summit, though the British government has refused to disclose the guest list. 

The event is a labor of love for Sunak, a tech-loving former banker who wants the U.K. to be a hub for computing innovation and has framed the summit as the start of a global conversation about the safe development of AI. But Vice President Kamala Harris is due to steal the focus on Wednesday with a separate speech in London setting out the U.S. administration’s more hands-on approach. 

She’s due to attend the summit on Thursday alongside government officials from more than two dozen countries including Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia — and China, invited over the protests of some members of Sunak’s governing Conservative Party. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also scheduled to discuss AI with Sunak in a livestreamed conversation on Thursday night. The tech billionaire was among those who signed a statement earlier this year raising the alarm about the perils that AI poses to humanity. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and executives from U.S. artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and influential computer scientists like Yoshua Bengio, one of the “godfathers” of AI, are also expected. 

The meeting is being held at Bletchley Park, a former top secret base for World War II codebreakers that’s seen as a birthplace of modern computing. 

One of Sunak’s major goals is to get delegates to agree on a first-ever communique about the nature of AI risks. He said the technology brings new opportunities but warns about frontier AI’s threat to humanity, because it could be used to create biological weapons or be exploited by terrorists to sow fear and destruction. 

Only governments, not companies, can keep people safe from AI’s dangers, Sunak said last week. However, in the same speech, he also urged against rushing to regulate AI technology, saying it needs to be fully understood first. 

In contrast, Harris will stress the need to address the here and now, including “societal harms that are already happening such as bias, discrimination and the proliferation of misinformation.” 

Harris plans to stress that the Biden administration is “committed to hold companies accountable, on behalf of the people, in a way that does not stifle innovation,” including through legislation. 

“As history has shown in the absence of regulation and strong government oversight, some technology companies choose to prioritize profit over: The wellbeing of their customers; the security of our communities; and the stability of our democracies,” she plans to say. 

She’ll point to President Biden’s executive order this week, setting out AI safeguards, as evidence the U.S. is leading by example in developing rules for artificial intelligence that work in the public interest. Among measures she will announce is an AI Safety Institute, run through the Department of Commerce, to help set the rules for “safe and trusted AI.” 

Harris also will encourage other countries to sign up to a U.S.-backed pledge to stick to “responsible and ethical” use of AI for military aims. 

A White House official gave details of Harris’s speech, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss her remarks in advance. 
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An Indonesian court sentenced to jail on Wednesday the chief executive and three other officials of a company whose cough syrup has been linked to the death of more than 200 children, for violating drug safety laws, the company’s lawyer said.

The Indonesian company, Afi Farma, was accused of producing cough syrups containing excess amounts of toxic material and prosecutors charged the four officials for “consciously” not testing the ingredients, despite having the means and responsibility to do so, according to a charge sheet. 

The company’s lawyer, Reza Wendra Prayogo, said they denied negligence and the company was considering whether to appeal.

The officials, including CEO Arief Prasetya Harahap, were sentenced to two years in prison by a court in the town of Kediri, in East Java province, where the company is based.

Prosecutors, who had sought up to nine years in prison for the accused, said that Afi Farma did not test the ingredients sent by its supplier and instead relied on certificates provided by them regarding product quality and safety. 

Reza told Reuters in October that Indonesia’s drug regulator, BPOM, did not require drugmakers to do rigorous testing of ingredients.

The case comes as efforts grow worldwide to tighten oversight of drug supply chains after a wave of poisonings linked to contaminated cough syrups that killed dozens of children in countries such as Gambia and Uzbekistan.
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The abbreviation of artificial intelligence (AI) has been named the Collins Word of the Year for 2023, the dictionary publisher said on Tuesday.

Lexicographers at Collins Dictionary said use of the term had “accelerated” and that it had become the dominant conversation of 2023.

“We know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology,” Collins managing director Alex Beecroft said.

Collins said its wordsmiths analyzed the Collins Corpus, a database that contains more than 20 billion words with written material from websites, newspapers, magazines and books published around the world.

It also draws on spoken material from radio, TV and everyday conversations, while new data is fed into the Corpus every month, to help the Collins dictionary editors identify new words and meanings from the moment they are first used.

“Use of the word as monitored through our Collins Corpus is always interesting and there was no question that this has also been the talking point of 2023,” Beecroft said.

Other words on Collins list include “nepo baby,” which has become a popular phrase to describe the children of celebrities who have succeeded in industries similar to those of their parents.

“Greedflation,” meaning companies making profits during the cost-of-living crisis, and “Ulez,” the ultra-low emission zone that penalizes drivers of the most polluting cars in London, were also mentioned.

Social media terms such as “deinfluencing” or “de-influencing,” meaning to “warn followers to avoid certain commercial products.” were also on the Collins list.

This summer’s Ashes series between England and Australia had many people talking about a style of cricket dubbed “Bazball,” according to Collins.

The term refers to New Zealand cricketer and coach Brendon McCullum, known as Baz, who advocates a philosophy of relaxed minds, aggressive tactics and positive energy.

The word “permacrisis,” defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity” was the Collins word of the year in 2022.

In 2020, it was “lockdown.” In 2016, it was “Brexi.t”

 
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Thousands of meters beneath the Pacific Ocean lie vast deposits of the metals needed for the shift to renewable energy. Mining companies are ready to scoop up this sunken treasure strewn across an area more than half the size of the continental United States. But not much is known about the ecosystem deep beneath the ocean and what impacts mining these rocks might have. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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A top U.N. agency is warning that if calls for a cease-fire in Gaza are not heeded, causalities will continue to mount, putting children in the densely populated Palestinian enclave at even greater risk.

“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, Tuesday. “It is a living hell for everyone else.”

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says that more than 8,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 3,457 children, have been killed since Israel began a punishing bombing campaign following the horrific massacre of its civilians by Hamas militants October 7.

“From the earliest days of the unprecedented hostilities in the Gaza Strip, UNICEF has been forthright on the need for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, for the aid to flow and for children abducted to be released,” he said. “Like many others, we have pleaded for the killing of children to stop.”

While Washington has thrown its support behind Israel, it has also called for the protection of civilians and pushed for the opening of humanitarian aid into Gaza as the Israeli military expands its ground campaign aiming to uproot Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Since Israel partially lifted its blockade of Gaza on October 21, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, says 143 trucks carrying food, water, and medical supplies have entered Gaza through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt.

“Before this escalation, there were 500 trucks on average going in every working day. So about 22 days per month,” said Jens Laerke, OCHA spokesperson.

“The equivalent of 50 trucks of that daily average of 500 was fuel,” he said.

OCHA says that none of the trucks entering Gaza now contain fuel, which is needed to produce electricity at Gaza’s only power plant, to back up hospital generators, keep water desalination plants running, and prevent Gaza’s few remaining bakeries from shutting down.

“Fuel is not just a luxury commodity for fancy cars to drive around,” said Christian Lindmeier, spokesperson for the World Health Organization. “It is vital for the water supply. It is vital for the ambulances, for the hospitals to operate and many other instances to make life in Gaza a little bit lighter in this ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.”

Israel refuses to allow fuel to enter Gaza because it classifies diesel as a “dual use” good that can be used by Hamas for military purposes. It also argues that Hamas has stockpiled large quantities of fuel which it is hoarding for military use.

It also insists that no cease-fire is possible while it is engaged in an existential struggle against an organization that is committed to the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

“Children are absolutely dying because there are situations where they do not have the medical supplies, the medical care they need … who have been impacted by the bombardments and should have had their lives saved,” said Elder.

“Without humanitarian access, the deaths from the attacks could be the tip of the iceberg,” he said, warning that deaths will increase substantially if hospitals continue to be deprived of the medicine they need, “if incubators start to fail, and hospitals go dark for lack of electricity.”

The WHO says 130 premature infants are dependent on incubators, 61 percent of whom are in the northern part of Gaza, where Israeli bombardment is most intense. It says 50,000 women are pregnant, with an average of 180 births a day, and 350,000 people with non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, need urgent medical care.

“None of this can happen without medical supplies, without electricity,” said Lindmeier. “This is an imminent public health catastrophe that looms with mass displacement, with overcrowding, with damage to water and sanitation infrastructure.”

Elder said UNICEF has sent 25 trucks across the border into Gaza since October 21. He said eight trucks, which arrived in Gaza Monday, were carrying water, hygiene and medical supplies, but no fuel.

“There is a lot of frustration and anger from agencies because we have so, so many trucks at that border, so many containers full and unable to get into Gaza.

“We know that even if we cannot get that cease-fire that we have so desperately been calling for from day one, that at least we must get these people the basics that any humans deserve — water, medicines.”

“Agencies are getting some in, UNICEF is getting some in,” he said. “But it remains a drop. It remains unacceptable.”
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With White House funding to put more electric cars on the road, some states are using the money to build out their part of a fast-charging EV network. Deana Mitchell has the story.
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In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says.

The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s.

Beyond that temperature increase, the risks of catastrophes increase, as the world will likely lose most of its coral reefs, a key ice sheet could kick into irreversible melt, and water shortages, heat waves and death from extreme weather dramatically increase, according to an earlier United Nations scientific report.

Hitting that threshold will happen sooner than initially calculated because the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution — tiny smoky particles called aerosols. Aerosols slightly cool the planet and mask the effects of burning coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s lead author said. Put another way, while cleaning up aerosol pollution is a good thing, that success means slightly faster rises in temperatures.

The study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change calculates what’s referred to as the remaining “carbon budget,” which is how much fossil fuels the world can burn and still have a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That is the threshold set by the 2015 Paris agreement.

The last 10 years are already on average 1.14 degrees Celsius (2.05 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the 19th century. Last year was 1.26 degrees Celsius (2.27 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer and this year is likely to blow past that, according to scientists.

The new study set the carbon budget at 250 billion metric tons. The world is burning a little more than 40 billion metric tons a year (and still rising), leaving six years left. But that six years started in January 2023, the study said, so that’s now only five years and a couple months away.

“It’s not that the fight against climate change will be lost after six years, but I think probably if we’re not already on a strong downward trajectory, it’ll be too late to fight for that 1.5 degree limit,” said study lead author Robin Lamboll, an Imperial College of London climate scientist.

A 2021 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report gave a budget of 500 billion metric tons pointed to a mid 2032 date for locking in 1.5 degrees, Lamboll said. An update by many IPCC authors this June came up with a carbon budget the same as Lamboll’s team, but Lamboll’s analysis is more detailed, said IPCC report co-chair and climate scientist Valerie Masson-Delmotte.

The biggest change from the 2021 report to this year’s studies is that new research show bigger reductions in aerosol emissions — which come from wildfires, sea salt spray, volcanoes and burning fossil fuels — that lead to sooty air that cools the planet a tad, covering up the bigger greenhouse gas effect. As the world cleans up its carbon-emitting emissions it is simultaneously reducing the cooling aerosols too and the study takes that more into account, as do changes to computer simulations, Lamboll said.

Even though the carbon budget looks to run out early in the year 2029, that doesn’t mean the world will instantly hit 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times. The actual temperature change could happen a bit earlier or as much as a decade or two later, but it will happen once the budget runs out, Lamboll said.

People should not misinterpret running out of the budget for 1.5 degrees as the only time left to stop global warming, the authors said. Their study said the carbon budget with a 50% chance to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is 1220 billion metric tons, which is about 30 years.

“We don’t want this to be interpreted as six years to save the planet,” study co-author Christopher Smith, a University of Leeds climate scientist, said. “If we are able to limit warming to 1.6 degrees or 1.65 degrees or 1.7 degrees, that’s a lot better than 2 degrees. We still need to fight for every tenth of a degree.”

Climate scientist Bill Hare of Climate Action Tracker, which monitors national efforts to reduce carbon emissions, said “breaching the 1.5 degree limit does not push the world over a cliff at that point, but it is very much an inflection point in increasing risk of catastrophic changes.”

As they head into climate negotiations in Dubai next month, world leaders still say “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.” Lamboll said limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is technically possible, but politically is challenging and unlikely.

“We have got to the stage where the 1.5C carbon budget is so small that it’s almost losing meaning,” said climate scientist Glen Peters of the Norwegian CICERO climate institute, who wasn’t part of the research. “If your face is about to slam in the wall at 100 miles per hour, it is sort of irrelevant if your nose is currently 1 millimeter or 2 millimeters from the wall. … We are still heading in the wrong direction at 100 mph.”

People “shouldn’t worry — they should act,” said climate scientist Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, who wasn’t part of Lamboll’s team. Acting as fast as possible “can halve the rate of warming this decade.”

 
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