Global climate change report
The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctic. (AP Photo/NASA)
and got a look at a draft of a new UN report on climate change. It’s bleak, to say the least.
From the Times:
Runaway growth on the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades, according to a draft of a major new United Nations report.
Global warming is already cutting grain production by several percentage points, the report found, and that could grow much worse if emissions continue unchecked. Higher seas, devastating heat waves, torrential rain and other climate extremes are also being felt around the world as a result of human emissions, the draft report said, and those problems are likely to intensify unless the gases are brought under control.
The world may already be nearing a temperature at which the loss of the vast ice sheet covering Greenland would become inevitable, the report said. The actual melting would then take centuries, but it would be unstoppable and could result in a sea level rise of 23 feet, with additional increases from other sources like melting Antarctic ice, potentially flooding the world’s major cities.
The draft report is the latest from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and summarizes earlier reports using “blunter, more forceful language.” Read Justin Gillis’ full article for the Times here.
The IPCC’s dire outlook comes amid tentative signs that the needle might be moving on the issue. Earlier this summer, the Obama administration announced plans to implement what is essentially a state-by-state cap and trade program. China announced its intention to do the same.
But one of the central points of the IPCC report is that some of what we’ve wrought is already irreversible, and more of it soon will be. The world’s existing power plants are already slated to pump over 300 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — a figure that’s growing by billions of tons each year, speeding up the changes that are already underway. Governments’ efforts to do something are a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed.
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Climate Change 2013 - The Physical Science Basis: Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Book (Cambridge University Press) |
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Climate Change 2014 - Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects: Volume 1, Global and Sectoral Aspects: Working Group ... to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Book (Cambridge University Press) |
What do the new errors in IPCC climate change report mean for the global warming movement? | Yahoo Answers
the IPCC were using software written to specifically show global warming trends and even using that biased software AND falsifying the data they still couldn't get it to show a warming trend, so they ignored their results and published what they thought the conclusions should have been, so even the IPCC have unwittingly confirmed that there is no global warming, regardless of that it still makes good sense to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, the results of pollution, co2 and the cost make alternatives like nuclear worth pursuing
@Jasmine Scarlatos: The joint chiefs of staff issued a report stating that global climate change is the greatest future threat to the U.S. #DebateWithBernie
RT @ewa_kim: Report @theCCCuk shows UK action on climate change in line with international effort and cld do more in global deal.
@DRUDGE_REPORT Global Warming/Climate change manmade cause= CHICKEN LITTLE, the sky is falling! They think that we are stupid!