Two days after a climate summit failed to deliver game-changing pledges to slash carbon emissions, the
United Nations warned Wednesday that global warming is devastating oceans and Earth's frozen spaces in ways that directly threaten a large slice of humanity.
Crumbling ice sheets, marine heatwaves, melting glaciers, ocean dead zones, thawing permafrost -- a raft of impacts on sea and ice are decimating fish stocks, lifting seas, depleting fresh water stores, and incubating superstorms that will ravage some cities annually by mid-century.
Some of these impacts are irreversible on a timescale of centuries, according to a landmark assessment approved by the 195-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).