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As I begin writing this, the latest CO 2 reading stands at 429.49 ppm and about 50 wars are ongoing in the world. It feels easier today to sympathize with someone who is not "interested" in tackling climate change. So I write today, not as a climate scientist looking to clarify any technical aspects of the climate crisis, but as a climate-conscious citizen looking to share something that brings her hope. I started thrifting about 7 years ago, when I moved to Montreal. A close friend introduced me to the practice and I cannot be thankful enough. Thrifting is essentially the practice of frequenting "thrift stores" or "used goods stores", knowing that you can find many useful things over time even though you can never be sure of what you would find on a particular day. The practice seems to be quite common and widely accepted in many cities in North America and Europe. This is heartening because these are also the regions with high per capita emissions. I h...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988. It produced its Second Assessment Report in 1995. 3 decades later, it's worth asking, how far have we come since then? - - - Other posts in this series: First Assessment Report: WGI | WGII | WGIII - - - Working Group I (The Science) One need only look at the structure of the Summary to get a broad snapshot of what was known then. Greenhouse gas concentrations had continued to increase since the previous report, aerosols were known to lead to cooling in some areas, the climate was known to be changing and there was reason to believe it was changing due to human activities. (This is an interesting nuance -- detecting a change is not the same as attributing it to human activities -- Gavin Schmidt elaborates on this here .) The climate was expected to continue to change and many uncertainties still remained. It was known quite clearly that -- " Many greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for a long ...