The world’s climate is "clearly out of balance and is warming", the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest scientific organisation dedicated to Earth, atmospheric, and space sciences, said in a statement.
This strong stance is a significant shift for the 50,000-member organisation. "The AGU has not done this in the past," AGU president Timothy Killeen was reported as saying.
"Warming greater than 2 degrees Celsius above nineteenth-century levels," the statement said, "is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and – if sustained over centuries – melting of much of the Greenland ice sheet."
If the 2-degree rise was to be avoided, the AGU said, annual emissions of carbon dioxide had to be cut by at least 50% by the end of the century.
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