“Potentially irreversible” damage is being done to the Earth, and time is running out to curb the worst effects of climate change. That’s the latest assessment from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its latest report was released overnight, and it’s a tome UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as an “atlas of human suffering”. Researchers say efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not just about preventing rising temperatures – they’re to mitigate extreme weather events, including fires, floods and drought. And their concern is that change is happening so quickly that there is no time to adapt, rendering 40% of the world’s population “highly vulnerable”. Picking up where last year’s climate change summit in Glasgow left off, the report’s authors say there is a brief window of time to avoid the worst. “Our report points out very clearly this is the decade of action if we are going to turn things around,” says co-chair Professor Debra Roberts.