Reality check IPPC report 2021

Carbon pollution has risen to such extremes that a key threshold in the fight to stop climate change — limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century — will be crossed within the next 15 years. That is one of the key findings from a landmark report approved by delegates from 195 countries and published Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The analysis, which comes amid record-breaking heat and rains that have rocked rich and poor countries alike, draws on more than 14,000 peer-reviewed studies to assess the physical science of climate change. It paints a sober picture of a planet warped beyond recognition by members of a single species in the space of just a few hundred years. "This report is a reality check," said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC working group that prepared it.