THE PROBLEM

CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE AS A REALITY.

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Damages from the 2021 disasters totaled approximately $145 billion. (All cost estimates are adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index, 2021).  The costliest 2021 events were Hurricane Ida ($75 billion), the mid-February Winter Storm / Cold Wave ($24.0 billion), and the Western wildfires ($10.9 billion). Adding the 2021 events to the record that began in 1980, the U.S. has sustained 310 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The cumulative cost for these 310 events exceeds $2.15 trillion.

Either we are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Among the most basic questions about global warming is how much are human-produced greenhouse gases influencing the climate today compared to the past? To answer this question, NOAA developed the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index ("AGGI" for short). Updated yearly, the AGGI calculates the combined warming influence of the most important long-lived greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous dioxide, and a number of industrial chemicals used in cooling and refrigeration, aerosol sprays, and other processes. The total direct heating influence in a given year is compared to conditions in 1990—the year that countries who signed the U.N. Kyoto Protocol agreed to use as a benchmark for their efforts to reduce emissions.

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^{The greenhouse gases produced from thawing permafrost will further increase temperatures which will, in turn, lead to more permafrost thawing, forming an unstoppable and irreversible self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Experts believe this process may have already begun. Giant craters and ponds of water (called ‘thermokarst lakes’) formed due to thawing have been recorded in the Arctic region. Some are so big that they can be seen from space.}

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