Singapore:

Climate change is driving changes in rainfall patterns across the world, scientists said in a paper published on Friday, which could also be intensifying typhoons and other tropical storms.

Taiwan, the Philippines and then China were lashed by the year’s most powerful typhoon this week, with schools, businesses and financial markets shut as wind speeds surged up to 227 kph (141 mph). On China’s eastern coast, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated ahead of landfall on Thursday.

Stronger tropical storms are part of a wider phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.

Researchers led by Zhang Wenxia at the China Academy of Sciences studied historical meteorological data and found about 75% of the world’s land area had seen a rise in “precipitation variability” or wider swings between wet and dry weather.

Warming temperatures have enhanced the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture, which is causing wider fluctuations in rainfall, the researchers said in a paper published by the Science journal.

“(Variability) has increased in most places, including Australia, which means rainier rain periods and drier dry periods,” said Steven Sherwood, a scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study.

“This is going to increase as global warming continues, enhancing the chances of droughts and/or floods.”

FEWER, BUT MORE INTENSE, STORMS

Scientists believe that climate change is also reshaping the behaviour of tropical storms, including typhoons, making them less frequent but more powerful.

“I believe higher water vapour in the atmosphere is the ultimate cause of all of these tendencies toward more extreme hydrologic phenomena,” Sherwood told Reuters.

Typhoon Gaemi, which first made landfall in Taiwan on Wednesday, was the strongest to hit the island in eight years.

While it is difficult to attribute individual weather events to climate change, models predict that global warming makes typhoons stronger, said Sachie Kanada, a researcher at Japan’s Nagoya University.

“In general, warmer sea surface temperature is a favourable condition for tropical cyclone development,” she said.

In its “blue paper” on climate change published this month, China said the number of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea had declined significantly since the 1990s, but they were getting stronger.

Taiwan also said in its climate change report published in May that climate change was likely to reduce the overall number of typhoons in the region while making each one more intense.

The decrease in the number of typhoons is due to the uneven pattern of ocean warming, with temperatures rising faster in the western Pacific than the east, said Feng Xiangbo, a tropical cyclone research scientist at the University of Reading.

Water vapour capacity in the lower atmosphere is expected to rise by 7% for each 1 degree Celsius increase in temperatures, with tropical cyclone rainfall in the United States surging by as much as 40% for each single degree rise, he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

According to a recent research, the summer months in 2023 were on average 2.2 C (4 F) warmer than the estimated average temperature across the years 1 to 1890.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

The intense northern hemisphere summer heat that drove wildfires across the Mediterranean, buckled roads in Texas and strained power grids in China last year made it not just the warmest summer on record – but the warmest in some 2,000 years, new research suggests.

The stark finding comes from one of two new studies released on Tuesday, as both global temperatures and climate-warming emissions continue to climb.

Scientists had quickly declared last year’s June to August period as the warmest since record-keeping began in the 1940s.

New work published in the journal Nature suggests the 2023 heat eclipsed temperatures over a far longer timeline – a finding established by looking at meteorological records dating to the mid-1800s and temperature data based on the analysis of tree rings across nine northern sites.

“When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is,” said study co-author Jan Esper, a climate scientist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany.

Last year’s summer season temperatures on lands between 30 and 90 degrees north latitude reached 2.07 degrees Celsius (3.73 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial averages, the study said.

Based on tree ring data, the summer months in 2023 were on average 2.2 C (4 F) warmer than the estimated average temperature across the years 1 to 1890.

The finding was not entirely a surprise. By January, scientists with the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service were saying the year of 2023 was “very likely” to have been the warmest in some 100,000 years.

However, proving such a long record is unlikely, Esper said. He and two other European scientists argued in a paper last year that year-by-year comparisons could not be established over such a vast time scale with current scientific methods, including gleaning temperature data from sources such as marine sediments or peat bogs.

“We don’t have such data,” Esper said. “That was an overstatement.”

Last year’s intense summer heat was amplified by the El Nino climate pattern, which typically coincides with warmer global temperatures, leading to “longer and more severe heatwaves, and extended periods of drought,” Esper said.

Heatwaves are already taking a toll on people’s health, with more than 150,000 deaths in 43 countries linked to heatwaves for each year between 1990 and 2019, according to the details of a second study published on Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine.

That would account for about 1% of global deaths – roughly the same toll taken by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

More than half of those heatwave-related excess deaths occurred in populous Asia.

When the data are adjusted for population size, Europe had the highest per capita toll with an average of 655 heat-related deaths each year per 10 million residents. Within the region, Greece, Malta, and Italy registered the highest excess deaths.

Extreme heat can trigger heart problems and breathing difficulty or cause heat stroke.

A woman covers her head for protection against the scorching sun on a hot summer day, in Kolkata, on May 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The searing April temperatures were the highest over eastern and northeastern (E&NE) India and the second highest over south India since 1901, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in a press conference on Wednesday.

These record-breaking temperatures were due to the combined effect of a prevailing El Nino and a weather system — called an “anticyclone” — that blocked moisture-laden sea breeze from the Bay of Bengal, which in other years brought rainfall and eased temperatures, said M. Mohapatra, Director-General, IMD.

Average temperatures over E&NE India were 28.1 degrees Celsius and max temperatures at 34 degrees Celsius, both nearly or two degrees above what’s typical for the month.

Some places also witnessed anomalous increases in temperature; for instance, Panagarh in West Bengal recorded 45.6 degrees Celsius, which was 10 degrees above normal and Kalaikunda, also in West Bengal, registered 47.2 degrees Celsius – 10.4 degrees above normal.

Also read: Warming of Indian Ocean to accelerate: IITM study

In southern peninsular India, average temperatures were as high as 37.25 degrees Celsius or about 1.35 degrees above normal. This was only slightly below the 37.57 degrees Celsius recorded in 2016 – the all-time high since 1901.

Odisha saw as many as 18 heatwave days and West Bengal 16 while Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala saw eight, seven and five days respectively. India’s 36 meteorological subdivisions (as defined by the IMD for weather and climate-based analysis) cumulatively see 71 heatwave days on average during April. This April, they saw 118 – the third highest since 2010. April 2022 saw 198 heatwave days and April 2010 saw 337 such days.

In contrast, north-western India did not see any heatwave day on account of regular incursions of “western disturbances” which are spells of rain that originate from Central Asia.

The hot conditions are likely to persist through most of May over most of India and this time, northwestern States/Union Territories such as Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi are also expected to register more than their usual quota of heatwaves, the agency predicted.

Image of people watching a sunset for representation
| Photo Credit: AP

The global economy is expected to lose about 19% income in the next 25 years due to climate change, with countries least responsible for the problem and having minimum resources to adapt to impacts suffering the most, according to a new study published on Wednesday.

The study by scientists at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said climate impacts could cost the global economy around $38 trillion a year by 2049.

“Our analysis shows climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly developed ones such as Germany, France, and the United States,” said scientist Leonie Wenz who led the study published in the journal Nature.

South Asia to be affected

South Asia and Africa will be strongly affected, said Maximilian Kotz, another researcher.

The researchers looked at detailed weather and economic data from over 1,600 regions globally, covering the last 40 years.

They said global income loss could vary between 11% and 29%, depending on different climate scenarios and uncertainties in the data.

The predicted loss is massive and already about six times more than what it would cost to reduce carbon emissions enough to keep the average temperature rise below two degrees Celsius, the researchers said.

These economic damages are mostly due to rising average temperatures. However, when the researchers also considered other factors like rains and storms, the predicted economic damages increased by about 50 per cent and varied more from one region to another.

Regions closest to equator to be hit

While most regions in the world are expected to suffer economically due to these changes, they said regions near the poles might see some benefits due to less temperature variability.

On the other hand, the hardest-hit regions will likely be those closer to the equator, which historically have contributed less to global emissions and currently have lower incomes.

“Our study highlights the considerable inequity of climate impacts: We find damages almost everywhere, but countries in the tropics will suffer the most because they are already warmer. Further temperature increases will therefore be most harmful there,” said Anders Levermann, head of Research Department Complexity Science at the Potsdam Institute and co-author of the study.

The countries least responsible for climate change are predicted to suffer income loss that is 60% greater than the higher-income countries and 40% greater than higher-emission countries. They are also the ones with the least resources to adapt to its impacts, he said.

“These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. We have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately; if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60 per cent of the global average by 2100,” Mr. Wenz said.

“It is on us to decide: structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas, and coal,” Mr. Levermann said.

Average temperatures

Global average temperatures have risen by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1850, exacerbating climate impacts, with 2023 being the hottest on record.

The greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels since the start of the Industrial Revolution, is closely tied to it.

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s “State of the Global Climate 2023” report, greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, and sea level rise all reached record highs in 2023.

Climate science says the world needs to slash CO2 emissions by 43% by 2030 to limit the average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the guardrail to prevent worsening of climate impacts.

The business-as-usual scenario will take the world to a temperature rise of around three degrees Celsius by the end of the century, scientists have warned.

FILE PHOTO: Police officers use a hose in effort to extinguish wildfires in Ogan Ilir regency, South Sumatra province, Indonesia, September 20, 2023, in this photo taken by Antara Foto.
| Photo Credit: Antara Foto/Nova Wahyudi

As the world gears up for COP28, there is alarming data on the horizon. The year 2023 is on course to possibly becoming the warmest year in recorded history, with temperatures nearing 1.4°C above the pre-industrial era average.

In September 2023, global temperatures reached a record high. The average surface air temperature was 16.38°C, which is 0.93°C higher than the September average between 1991 and 2020. Moreover, it was 0.5°C warmer than the earlier record set in September 2020.

Chart 1 | The chart shows the globally averaged surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1991–2020 for each September from 1940 to 2023.

Charts appear incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

The month of September 2023 was approximately 1.75°C above the average temperature of September during the 1850-1900 span, which is considered the pre-industrial benchmark.

From January to September 2023, the global surface air temperature was 0.52°C above the 1991-2020 average and 0.05°C higher than the same period in 2016, the warmest year. During this time frame in 2023, the world’s average temperature was 1.40°C higher than the baseline period of 1850-1900.

According to the Copernicus Climate Bulletin, in September 2023, the majority of Europe experienced temperatures significantly higher than the average from 1991 to 2020. A region stretching from France to Finland and extending to north-western Russia reported its hottest September ever. Notably, both Belgium and the U.K. faced unparalleled heatwave conditions at the start of the month.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the average global surface air temperatures for the 30 warmest months between 1940 and 2023, arranged in ascending order. The temperatures for June, July, August, and September of 2023 are highlighted.

The hottest-ever September of 2023 followed the warmest-ever two months on record — July and August 2023 — when the global mean temperature reached monthly records of 16.95°C and 16.82, respectively. The notable increase in these two months, especially compared to the July 2019 record of 16.63°C, is evident in Chart 2. Moreover, September 2023 is the sole September represented in this chart. The warmest September before 2023 recorded an average surface air temperature 15.88°C, which is not high enough to be included in chart 2.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the global daily surface air temperature (°C) from January 1, 1940 to September 30, 2023, plotted as a time series for each year. The line for 2023 is highlighted.

Other years are marked in grey. The thick black line represents the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels. For more than 80 days in 2023, the global temperature was at least 1.5° higher than pre-industrial levels. The year 2023 holds the record for the highest number of such days.

In a worrying update, the extent of sea ice has stayed at very low levels for this time of the year in the Antarctic region. Sea ice extent refers to the total area of an ocean where there is at least some sea ice present. Satellite records for September reveal that both daily and monthly extents have plummeted to their lowest annual peaks, with the monthly extent dropping 9% below the norm.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the daily Antarctic sea ice extent from 1979 to September 2023. The year 2023 is highlighted; the median for 1991–2020 is shown as a dotted line.

Meanwhile, the monthly average Arctic sea ice extent in September 2023 reached its annual minimum of 4.8 million km2, about 1.1 million km2 (or 18%) below the 1991-2020 average for September. This value is the fifth lowest in the satellite data record.

Source: European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service

Also read: In Frames | The heat is on

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New Delhi:

Climate change by the turn of the Century could lead to global warming that could trigger heart attacks and heat strokes in some of the most populated areas of the world, including India and the Indus valley, new research has predicted.

Interdisciplinary research from Penn State College of Health and Human Development, Purdue University College of Sciences and Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future — published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” — indicated that warming of the planet beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels will be devastating for human health.

Human bodies can take only certain combinations of heat and humidity before experiencing heat-related health problems, such as heat stroke or heart attack.

The study indicates that if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India’s Indus River Valley, 1 billion people in eastern China and 800 million in sub-Saharan Africa will experience hours of heat that surpass human tolerance.

The cities that would bear the brunt of this annual heat wave will include Delhi, Kolkata, Shanghai, Multan, Nanjing and Wuhan.

Because these areas comprise low and middle income nations, the people may not have access to air-conditioners or other effective ways of cooling their bodies.

If global warming of the planet continues to go 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the spiked heat levels could affect the Eastern Seaboard and the middle of the United States – from Florida to New York and from Houston to Chicago. South America and Australia would also experience extreme heat, the research found.

But people in developed nations would suffer less than the developing nations, where the old and the ailing may die.

“The worst heat stress will occur in regions that are not wealthy and that are expected to experience rapid population growth in the coming decades,” said the research paper’s co-author Matthew Huber, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University.

“This is true despite the fact that these nations generate far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than wealthy nations. As a result, billions of poor people will suffer, and many could die. But wealthy nations will suffer from this heat as well, and in this interconnected world, everyone can expect to be negatively affected in some way,” he added.

To stop temperatures from increasing, the researchers said the emission of greenhouse gases, especially the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels, must be reduced. If changes are not made, middle-income and low-income countries will suffer the most, they said.

The global stocktake outcome may also include a call for a “global phase-out of unabated coal power generation by 2040 in a just manner” and tripling the capacity deployment of renewable and clean energy by 2030. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Calls to phase out unabated fossil fuels, reform subsidies on it and triple global renewable energy capacity may find their way into the outcome of the first-ever global stocktake, a periodic assessment of collective efforts to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

Initiated in Glasgow in 2021, the first-ever global stocktake will conclude at the annual climate talks (COP28) in Dubai in December.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recently released a report summarising submissions made by countries and non-party stakeholders regarding the political response to the global stocktake.

“They will inform negotiations but there’s no guarantee any particular element will make it into the final text. With that said, fossil fuel phase-out is prominently featured in this long list of possible decision elements,” Natalie Jones, a policy advisor at climate policy think tank International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said.

According to the UNFCCC report, possible elements of the global stocktake outcome could include a call to parties on “phase-out of fossil fuels, support global commitment to accelerate the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels, and efforts to phase out inefficient fuel subsidies by 2025, supported by enabling environments and upscaling investments in renewable energy”.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in September that global demand for oil, natural gas and coal is likely to peak by 2030. The IEA termed it an encouraging development but “not nearly enough” to limit the rise in global average temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Countries promised to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh in 2022, but they hit record highs in 2022.

A report that came ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi in September said countries in the bloc allocated a staggering USD 1.4 trillion of public funds to support fossil fuels in 2022, aiming to counter the impact of their soaring prices due to the Ukraine war and strengthen energy reserves.

Earth’s global surface temperature has risen by around 1.15 degrees Celsius. The CO2 spewed mostly by the developed countries into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution is closely tied to it.

In the business-as-usual scenario, the world is heading for a temperature rise of around 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Climate science says the world must halve emissions by 2030 from the 2009 levels to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial levels to avoid extreme, destructive and likely irreversible effects of climate change.

According to global agencies, the last four months (June, July, August and September) were the hottest on record, with 2023 on track to be the warmest year ever.

Developing countries argue that wealthier nations should take greater responsibility for emission reductions, given their massive historical emissions and provide the necessary means of implementation, including finance and technology, to assist developing and vulnerable nations in transitioning to clean energy and adapting to climate change.

The global stocktake outcome may also include a call for a “global phase-out of unabated coal power generation by 2040 in a just manner” and tripling the capacity deployment of renewable and clean energy by 2030.

Doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2.2 per cent to over 4 per cent annually across sectors by 2030 is also among the possible elements listed in the U.N. report for discussion at COP28.

The final discussions could also include a call for supporting the doubling of low-carbon hydrogen production across sectors by 2030 and recognising the role of natural gas as an efficient transitional fuel.

The UNFCCC report highlights the possible element that the global North cannot be asking to end financing for fossil fuels in the global South “without taking corresponding actions” in their own countries.

India had also highlighted this issue in its submission to the UNFCCC regarding its expectations from the global stocktake outcome.

Pope Francis challenged world leaders on October 4 to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it’s too late, warning that God’s increasingly warming creation is fast reaching a “point of no return.”

In an update to his landmark 2015 encyclical on the environment, Pope heightened the alarm about the “irreversible” harm to people and planet already under way and lamented that once again, the world’s poor and most vulnerable are paying the highest price.

“We are now unable to halt the enormous damage we have caused. We barely have time to prevent even more tragic damage,” Pope warned.

He took square aim at the United States, noting that per-capita emissions in the U.S. are twice as high as China and seven times greater than the average in poor countries. While individual, household efforts are helping, “we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he said.

The document, “Praise God,” was released on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the pontiff’s nature-loving namesake, and was aimed at spurring negotiators to commit to binding climate targets at the next round of U.N. talks in Dubai.

Using precise scientific data, sharp diplomatic arguments and a sprinkling of theological reasoning, Pope delivered a moral imperative for the world to transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy with measures that that are “efficient, obligatory and readily monitored.”

“What is being asked of us is nothing other than a certain responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind, once we pass from this world,” he said.

As it is, Pope’s 2015 encyclical “Praise Be” was a watershed moment for the Catholic Church, the first time a Pope had used one of his most authoritative teaching documents to recast the climate debate in moral terms.

In that text, which has been cited by Presidents, patriarchs and premiers and spurred an activist movement in the the church, Pope called for a bold cultural revolution to correct a “structurally perverse” economic system where the rich exploit the poor, turning Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”

Even though encyclicals are meant to stand the test of time, Pope said he felt an update to his original was necessary because “our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”

He excoriated people, including those in the church, who doubt mainstream climate science about heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, sarcastically deflating their arguments and showing his impatience with their profit-at-all-cost mentality.

Shaming them for their reliance on “allegedly solid scientific data,” he said the doubters’ arguments about potential job losses from a clean energy transition were bunk. And he cited data showing that increased emissions and the corresponding rise in global temperatures have accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last 50 years.

“It is no longer possible to doubt the human – ‘anthropic’ – origin of climate change,” he asserted.

While acknowledging that “certain apocalyptic diagnoses” may not be grounded, he said inaction is no longer an option. The devastation is already under way, he said, including with some already “irreversible” harm done to biodiversity and species loss that will only snowball unless urgent action is taken now.

“Small changes can cause greater ones, unforeseen and perhaps already irreversible, due to factors of inertia,” he noted. “This would end up precipitating a cascade of events having a snowball effect. In such cases, it is always too late, since no intervention will be able to halt a process once begun.”

“Praise God,” was issued ahead of the next round of U.N. climate talks which begin November 30 in Dubai. Just as he did with his 2015 encyclical “Praise Be,” which was penned before the start of the Paris climate conference, Pope aimed to cast the issue of global warming in stark moral terms to spur courageous decisions by world leaders.

In the 2015 landmark Paris Agreement, countries of the world agreed to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) or at least two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. It’s already warmed about 1.1 degrees (two degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-1800s.

Pope said that it was clear that the Paris target will be breached and will soon reach three degrees Celsius, and that already the effects are obvious, with oceans warming, glaciers melting and the world registering record heat waves and extreme weather events.

“Even if we do not reach this point of no return, it is certain that the consequences would be disastrous and precipitous measures would have to be taken, at enormous cost and with grave and intolerable economic and social effects,” he warned.

Since 2015, the world has spewed at least 288 billion metric tonnes (317 billion U.S. tonnes) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air, not including this year’s emissions, according to the scientists at Global Carbon Project. In August 2015, there were 399 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air and in August 2023 it was up to 420 parts per million, a 5% jump.

The record-hot summer of 2023 is one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) warmer than the summer of 2015, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Antarctica and Greenland have lost more than 2,100 billion metric tonnes (2,300 billion U.S. tonnes) of land ice, since the summer of 2015, according to NASA.

And in the United States alone, there have been 152 climate or weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage since the pope’s first climate message, with costs adjusted for inflation, according to NOAA. Pope concluded his document by noting the emissions rate in the U.S. and shaming it to do better.

“’Praise God’ is the title of this letter. For when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies,” he wrote.

In 2022, the burning of fossil fuels provided 82% of the world’s energy. In 2000, it was 87%. Even as renewables have undergone tremendous growth, they’ve been offset by increased demand for energy.

That’s why the United Nations earlier this month released a global stocktake – an assessment on how the world is going in weaning itself off these energy-dense but dangerously polluting fuels. Short answer: progress, but nowhere near enough, soon enough.

If we consult history, we find that energy transitions are not new. To farm fields and build cities, we’ve gone from relying on human or animal muscle to wind and water to power sailboats and mill grain. Then we began switching to the energy dense hydrocarbons, coal, gas and oil. But this can’t last. We were first warned in 1859 that when burned, these fuels add to the Earth’s warming blanket of greenhouse gases and threatening our liveable climate.

It’s time for another energy transition. We’ve done it before. The problem is time – and resistance from the old energy regime, fossil fuel companies. Energy historian Vaclav Smil calculates past energy transitions have taken 50–75 years to ripple through societies. And we no longer have that kind of time, as climate change accelerates. This year is likely the hottest in 120,000 years.

Also Read | Seeing India’s energy transition through its States 

So can we learn anything from past energy transitions? As it happens, we can.

Energy shifts happen in fits and starts

Until around 1880, the world ran on wood, charcoal, crop residue, manure, water and wind. In fact, some countries relied on wood and charcoal throughout the 20th century – even as others were shifting from coal to oil.

The English had used coal for domestic heating from the time of the Romans because it burned longer and had nearly double the energy intensity of wood.

So what drove the shift? Deforestation was a part. The reliance on wood worked while there were trees. In the pre-industrial era, cities of 500,000 or more needed huge areas of forests around them.

In some locales wood seemed boundless, free and expendable. The costs to biodiversity would become apparent only later.

Also Read | High hopes for climate and energy outcomes at summit as India takes lead

Britain was once carpeted in forest. Endemic deforestation drove the change to coal in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most English coal pits opened between 1540 and 1640.

When the English figured out how to use coal to make steam and push a piston, it made even more possible – pumping water from deepening mining pits, the invention of locomotives, and transporting produce, including the feed needed by working animals.

Yet for all this, coal had only reached 5% of the global market by 1840.

In North America, coal didn’t overtake wood until as late as 1884 – even as crude oil became more important.

Why did America first start exploiting oil reserves? In part to replace expensive oil from the heads of sperm whales. Before hydrocarbon oil was widely available, whaling was depended upon for lubricants and some lighting. In 1846, the US had 700 whaling vessels scouring the oceans for this source of oil.

Also Read | India plans to export solar power: official

Crude oil was struck first in Pennsylvania in 1859. To extract it required drilling down 21 metres. The drill was powered by a steam engine – which may have been fired by wood.

Steam and muscle

The 19th century energy transition took decades. It wasn’t a revolution so much as a steady shift. By the end of that century, global energy supply had doubled and half of it was from coal.

When they were first invented in 1712, steam engines converted just 2% of coal into useful energy. Almost 150 years later they were still highly inefficient at just 15%. (Petrol-powered cars still waste about 66% of the energy in their fuel).

Even so, steam sped up early proto-industries such as textiles, print production and traditional manufacturing.

But the engines did not free us from the yoke. In fact, early coal mining actually increased demand for human labour. Boys as young as six worked at lighter tasks. Conditions were generally horrific. Alongside human muscle was animal strength. Coal was often raised from pits by draft horses.

Also Read | 57% of power generated will be via renewable sources by 2027: Central Electricity Authority

In 1850s New England, steam was three times more expensive than water flows powering textile mills. Vaclav Smil has shown industrial waterwheels and turbines “competed successfully with steam engines for decades”. The energy of flowing water was free. Digging up coal was labor-intensive.

Why did steam win? Human ecologist Andreas Malm argues what really drove the shift to steam-powered mills was capital. Locating steam engines in urban centres made it easier to concentrate and control workers, as well as overcoming worker walk-outs and machine breaking.

The question of who does the work is often overlooked. When energy historians refer vaguely to human muscle, we should ask: whose muscles? Was the work done by slaves or forced labourers?

Even in the current energy transition there can be gross disparities between employer and worker. As heat intensifies, some employers are giving ice vests to their migrant workers so they can keep working. That’s reminiscent of coal shovelers in the furnace-like stokeholes of steam ships being immersed in ice-baths on collapse, as historian On Barak has shown.

What does this mean for us?

As Vaclav Smil points out, “every transition to a new energy supply has to be powered by the intensive deployment of existing energies and prime movers”. In fact, Smil argues the idea of the “industrial revolution” is misleading. It was not sudden. Rather, it was “gradual, often uneven”.

History may seem like it unfolds neatly. But it doesn’t at all. In earlier transitions, we see overlaps. Hesitation. Sometimes, more intense use of earlier energy sources. They start as highly localised shifts, depending on available resources, before new technologies spreads along trade routes. Ultimately market forces have driven – or hindered – adoption.

Time is short. But on the plus side, there are market forces now driving the shift to clean energy. Once solar panels and wind turbines are built, sunlight and wind are free. It is the resistance of the old guard – fossil fuel corporations – that is holding us back.

The heat is about to be turned up on fossil fuels, the United States and President Joe Biden.

As a record-smashing and deadly hot summer draws to a close, the United Nations and the city that hosts it are focusing on climate change and the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that causes it. It features a special U.N. summit and a week of protests and talk-heavy events involving leaders from business, health, politics and the arts. Even a royal prince — William — is getting in on the action.

The annual Climate Week, which coincides with the U.N. General Assembly, kicks off Sunday with tens of thousands of people expected in the “March to End Fossil Fuels” Manhattan rally, one of hundreds of worldwide protests.

This week “is the start of an incredible pressure cooker that we are all part of,” said Jean Su, a march organiser and energy justice director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It is coming from the top down, from that chief of the United Nations and now it is coming from bottom up in over 400 distributed actions across the world.”

Much of the heat is coming from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is convening a new Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday that has a special twist: Only leaders from nations that bring new and meaningful action will be allowed to speak. And the U.N. isn’t saying yet who will get that chance.

It won’t be Mr. Biden, who is speaking Tuesday at the U.N., the White House said. Nor will it be the leaders of China, the United Kingdom, Russia or France — all major players in the development and use of fossil fuels — who won’t even be in New York.

Mr. Guterres has repeatedly aimed his criticism at fossil fuels, calling them “incompatible with human survival.” He and scientific reports out of the United Nations have emphasised that the only way to curb warming and meet international goals is to “phase out” fossil fuels.

Phase-out is a term that world leaders in past climate negotiations and meetings of large economic powers have refused to back, instead opting for watered-down phrases such as “phase down” of unabated coal, allowing fossil use if its emissions are somehow captured and stored. The president of the upcoming international climate negotiations in Dubai is an oil executive from the United Arab Emirates and will be speaking at Wednesday’s summit, though his dual role has upset activists and some scientists.

“This really is an unprecedented soft power moment where the U.N. chief is throwing fossil fuels into the limelight and forcing heads of states to respond,” Ms. Su said. “Whether it’s yes or no, he’s at least forcing them to respond as to will you commit to no new fossil fuel development in line with climate science?”

But U.N. chiefs have little real power, said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare, a climate scientist.

“They can talk. They can persuade. They can from time-to-time constructively criticise and that’s all the tools that he’s got,” Mr. Hare said. “The U.N. secretary-general has moral authority and he’s using that.”

Mr. Guterres “can shame leaders who show up with pitiful offers in terms of climate action,” said Power Shift Africa Director Mohamed Adow, a longtime climate diplomacy observer. “We’ve got to a point where we can no longer be able to afford the velvet glove diplomacy.”

Mr. Guterres will ask nations to accelerate their efforts to rid themselves of carbon-based energy, with the richest nations that can afford it going first and faster, and providing financial aid to the poorer nations that can’t afford it, said Selwin Hart, Mr. Guterres’ special adviser for climate action.

“We know the use of fossil fuels is the main cause of the climate crisis, coal, oil and gas,” Mr. Hart said Friday. “We need to accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels. But it must be just, fair and equitable.”

But the same 20 richest economies who promise to slice carbon emissions “are now issuing new oil and gas licensing at a time when the (International Energy Agency and the science-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has clearly stated that this is incompatible with the 1.5 degree (Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) goal of the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Hart said.

Yet speeding to net zero emissions of carbon requires rapid and huge reshaping of the energy landscape that “could inflict serious harm on the economy,” American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle said last month.

Environmental activists calculate that five rich northern countries — the United States, Canada, Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom — that talk about cutting back emissions are responsible for more than half of the planned expansion of oil and gas drilling through 2050. The United States accounts for more than one-third.

So activists and protesters at Sunday’s march say they are aiming their frustration — and pressure — at Mr. Biden and America.

However, Biden has repeatedly trumpeted last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $375 billion to fight climate change, mostly on solar panels, energy efficiency, air pollution controls and emission-reducing equipment for coal- and gas-fueled power plants.

“They want to be seen as the good guys, but the fact is they have very little to back it up,” said Brandon Wu, policy director at ActionAid USA. He pointed to the new drilling plans and said the United States has failed to deliver on its promised climate-based financial aid to poor countries and has not increased its money pledges like other nations.

“How much carnage does the planet have to suffer for global leaders to act?” Ms. Su said. “We want President Biden and other major oil gas producers to phase out fossil fuels.”