Thread by @patrickgaley

What we are witnessing - record temperatures, devastating fires, crop failures - isn't a heatwave, or weather, it's climate change.

There are fires blazing right now in Lapland. That's where Santa is meant to live, the precise metaphor for Arctic and cold. And it's on fire

Take this one graphic from the @NOAA which monitors the global climate. This is May 2018:

Europe had the warmest May since records began.

The US had the warmest May since records began.

The Arctic had the least amount of sea ice since records began.

Antarctic sea ice levels were third lowest ever.

So don't call it a heatwave. This is man-made climate change, the late Anthropocene, in action.

And we're already past the point of no return.

The last three years (2015-17) were the three hottest years ever recorded.

You know when experts are accused of doom-mongering, like with say Brexit, then turn out to be absolutely right?

Well you probably don't want to hear the Earth's "worst-case scenario" climate projections, which will inevitably turn out to be right.

It's known as RCP8.5 and predicts that mankind will do little or nothing to combat greenhouse gas emissions, as the global population swells and energy and food insecurity increases

Under RCP8.5, global temperatures will be 4.9C hotter than currently. (It's currently 33C in UK)

This is a map developed in partnership with the New Scientist. It shows the projected effect of a 4C global temperature rise

Green = food growing zones
Yellow = uninhabitable desert
Brown = uninhabitable due to extreme weather events
Red = just plain disappeared

So the eastern seaboard is gone, India and much of Pakistan abandoned, south America and most of Africa largely uninhabitable

Shanghai, Hong Kong, Osaka, Alexandria, Rio, Miami all abandoned. Unlivable.

Mega cities worth of people disgorged elsewhere. Think of the human exodus, its socioeconomic consequences, and the inevitable political manipulation that will follow

A few notable exceptions aside, most northern nations now say they are "full" and there's no room there for the world's 60m displaced people.

Now imagine 2 billion displaced by sea-level rises, droughts and flooding