Hi this is Tim Harford and thank you very much for downloading the shorter World Service

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Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service.

We're your weekly guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life and I'm Tim Harford.

This year the headlines about the climate have been pretty gloomy.

UN scientists say 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record and they fear it's only going to get worse.

In the coming decades we will see this negative trend to continue anyhow, which means that we will see more often disasters related to weather.

The UN Authority on Weather, the World Meteorological Association, says carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere

has reached a new record, 400 parts per million.

We have a growth rate of more than two parts per million per year, so if we don't decrease

this within the next 10 years significantly, we are getting into threatening territory.

And it may feel as though all the talk about tackling climate change has come to nothing.

But amidst the bad news, is there some good news?

It was reported recently that the world reached a milestone last year,

that for the first time globally, renewable energy capacity overtook coal.

This news was reported by the Financial Times, the BBC and many other places.

The greenhouse effect is warming the planet, carbon dioxide is the most significant greenhouse gas,

and coal-fired power is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions while renewable energy isn't.

So on the face of it it seems like good news and loyal listener Hannah Morrie got in touch hoping that it is.

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