The United Nations has a specialized weather agency, called the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and working under the auspices of the WMO is a large international collaboration of climate scientists, called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Every several years, the IPCC issues a series of scientific reports detailing the status and impacts of Earth’s warming climate.
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We are currently in the cycle of the latest reports being issued, called The Sixth Assessment. Last year, the IPCC issued The Sixth Assessment Working Group I report (The Physical Science Basis...you can see it at here.)
On Saturday, Working Group II finalized its report, called Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, which was released to the world at 6:00 a.m. this morning. The Working Group III report, called Solutions, will be released about one month from now.
I was granted special access to the Working Group II report yesterday, and participated in a Climate Nexus Zoom press conference with some of the North American scientists who worked on it. So that is how I was able to post this article at the same time the information was first released.
Inside the latest IPCC climate change report
One of the most concerning conclusions in the report was summarized by Dr. Camille Parmesan at the press conference, who said that adverse impacts due to the unnaturally warming climate is more widespread and more impactful than was projected in earlier reports.
This includes, disease and pest outbreaks, species loss, extreme events resulting in loss of life, wildfires, drying of peatlands, and loss of permafrost (permafrost locks carbon in the ground but, when that permanently frozen ground thaws, it can become a SOURCE of additional atmospheric carbon).
Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr added that many extreme weather events are now being partially attributed to climate change. In fact, remember last year’s unbelievable Pacific Northwest heat wave? Climate scientists now say that the magnitude of that heat wave was not possible without climate change. Climate change is also stressing food systems.
Here in North America, that includes wheat, maize and soybean crops, which are expected to decrease. And here’s something you probably didn’t know: climate change will also reduce the nutritional density of some of the plant food we eat. Livestock and fisheries are also being increasingly stressed.
Dr. Kris Ebi and Dr. Sherilee Harper reported that rising temperatures are causing an increasing loss of life, and are also impacting adverse pregnancies. Most striking to me, and this is something that never occurred to me, is their sobering assessment that climate change is worsening mental illness in many ways.
Not only are people evacuated due to extreme weather events increasingly stressed, but anxiety is increasing just from seeing these events on television or on social media. People are essentially developing PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome) from this. Food insecurity is also increasing mental stress and illness.
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One more scary statement came from Dr. Adelle Thomas, who said that if the warming is not slowed and the planet’s average temperature surpasses 1.5°C / 2.7°F of warming above the baseline average, then parts of our planet where people now live will become uninhabitable.
Rising sea levels will cause some Pacific island nations to disappear completely. Think about that for a moment. Entire island nations will be gone. Also remember that rising sea levels will cause higher tides and much more severe storms surges from hurricanes and tropical storms.
That saltwater pushing farther inland could ruin freshwater crops. The increased storm surge destruction may cause some coastlines to be vacated. In other places, it may simply become too hot and dry to sustain life, and people will have to move.
There is one last thing I’d like to share with you. Since many of you ask me this, I asked the scientists if the basic science of climate change is still up for debate, or if it is settled science. Here’s Dr. Kris Ebi’s reply: “Yes, the science is settled that humans are changing our climate and that continued greenhouse gas emissions will further change weather variables and weather patterns that will put human and natural systems at much higher risk than today.”
Bottom line
And this is what I want to leave you with. Virtually every climate scientist on the planet agrees that the planet is warming unnaturally, and that human activity is the proximate cause. Allow me to close with an analogy that I use in my global warming lectures: let’s say you look in the mirror and notice a lesion on your ear.
So you go to see your dermatologist, and she/he takes one look at it and says, “I think that’s a melanoma, we’d better cut that out.” You reply that you want one hundred opinions on this, so you go to see ninety-nine other doctors.
When finished, ninety-nine of the one hundred doctors say that they think it’s a melanoma that needs to be addressed immediately, while a single doctor says “I think there’s enough uncertainty that we should wait a few months and see how it looks.” WHAT WOULD YOU DO? This is exactly where we’re at with global warming. Over ninety-nine percent of the world’s climate scientists agree.
Debating what to do about climate change it is exactly what policymakers are supposed to do, and then come up with solutions. But the debate is over about IF the planet is warming and IF the proximate cause is human activity.
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