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Entire island nations “rendered uninhabitable”, millions of people to be
displaced by floods and rising seas, uncertainties over global food
supplies and severe impacts on human health across the world.

The news from the United Nations on the likely impacts of climate change is dire, especially for the poorest people on the planet.

There will likely be more floods, more droughts and more intense heatwaves, says the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

As human emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, natural
ecosystems come under extreme stress with “significant” knock-on effects
for societies.

“Changes in the availability of food, fuel, medicine, construction
materials and income are possible as these ecosystems are changed,” says
the report.

But in the words of that great British band The Smiths, you can now stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.

That’s because all of the above comes not from today’s blockbuster IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, but from the first one started in 1988 and published in 1990. Much of the science it drew on was older still.

Just so we can calibrate our memories here, 1990 was the year Tim
Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, Nelson Mandela got out of jail
and MC Hammer wore those pantaloons (U Can’t Touch This).

Now more than 25 years after scientists started compiling that first
report, the latest report is similarly alarming – just with added
impacts and greater certainty.