International and scientific agreement that fossil fuel combustion and deforestation are the major causes of global climate change, and the increasingly disruptive environmental and societal effects that are occurring, have led to widespread calls for mitigation and adaptation. Greatly improved efficiency and switching to non–carbon-emitting technologies, and doing so soon, can eventually halt climate disruption. A largely untapped opportunity for earlier slowing is for the world community to also move aggressively to limit emissions of short-lived species, including methane, black carbon, and the precursors to tropospheric ozone. Even with the most aggressive foreseeable emissions reductions, however, climate change will continue for many decades if additional steps are not taken, and so adaptation is, and will be, essential. And without additional actions, the decay of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, significantly accelerated sea-level rise, and other disruptive surprises will grow beyond manageable, even to dangerous, levels.
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