Climate Change Accelerates: 2024 Becomes Earth's Warmest Year, Texas Feels the Heat

People in Texas who are enjoying the unusually warm weather in December are seeing the results of a sobering truth: After beating out 2023, 2024 is now officially the hottest year ever recorded. Scientists are getting more and more worried that they may have misjudged how fast the atmosphere is warming. The last ten years have been the ten warmest on record.

Even though temps and greenhouse gas emissions are still going up, fossil fuel companies want rules to be loosened. Texas regulators and the American Petroleum Institute want to lower emissions rules for cars, make it harder to buy electric cars, and allow more emissions. Climate worries have been played down by politicians like Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, which has slowed down action even more.

Even though most scientists agree on a lot of things and most people are angry about the climate, partisanship makes it harder to find real answers.

A study by Pew Research shows that almost two-thirds of Americans know that climate change is happening, but they still don't agree on what that means for the economy. Most Democrats think that the switch to clean energy will be good for the economy, but Republicans are worried that it could hurt it.

Climate scientists are rethinking their predictions for the whole world because average temperatures have regularly been higher than the 1.5°C goal set by the Paris Agreement for the past two years, which was decades earlier than expected. 

A new study in Oxford Open Climate Change says that global warming could go over 2°C before 2050 if we don't make big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. This would make droughts, storms, and heatwaves worse.

In Texas, November's average temperatures were similar to long-term warming trends. This makes it even more important to move quickly. Still, there is government gridlock and resistance to making changes to one's lifestyle. This makes many people wonder what will finally push everyone to act together.

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