World leaders have been meeting for 29 years to try to curb global warming, and in that time Earth has become a much hotter and deadlier planet.
Trillions of tons of ice have disappeared over that period, the burning of fossil fuels has spewed billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the air, and hundreds of thousands of people have died from heat and other weather disasters stoked by climate change, statistics show.
Data analyzed by The Associated Press from government figures and scientific reports shows "how much we did lose Earth," said former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief William K. Reilly, who headed the American delegation three decades ago. In both cases, the United States, a top-polluting country, helped negotiate the deals but later pulled out of the process when a Republican president took office. The U.S. has since rejoined the Paris agreement.
And Michael Zemp, who runs the World Glacier Monitoring Service, said Shepherd's numbers may be a little low. He calculates that since 1992, the glaciers of the world have lost nearly 8.6 trillion metric tons, about a trillion tons more than Shepherd's figures. The United States has had 265 weather disasters that caused at least US$1 billion in damage -- adjusted to 2021 dollars -- since 1992, including 18 so far this year. Those disasters have caused 11,991 deaths and cost US$1.8 trillion. From 1980 to 1992, the U.S. averaged three of those billion-dollar weather disasters a year. Since 1993, the country has averaged nine a year.
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