Photo: Oxfam, Creative Commons
A new United Nations report shines light on the ever growing seriousness of climate change.
The destructive effects of climate change will affect everyone in coming decades, the chairman of the organisation behind the world’s most comprehensive climate change study to date warned.
Flooding, storm surges, droughts and heatwaves are among key risks of global warming that will pose growing threats to humans in the future due to rising temperatures.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that the effects of climate change are already occurring on all continents and across the oceans.
Entitled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, it details the impacts of weather change to date, the future risks from a changing climate, and the opportunities for effective action to reduce risks.
The report concludes that responding to increasing temperatures involves making choices about risks in a changing world. The nature of the risks of climate change are increasingly clear, though it will also continue to produce surprises. The report identifies vulnerable people, industries, and ecosystems around the world.
“We live in an era of man-made global warming,” said Vicente Barros, Co-Chair of Working Group. “In many cases, we are not prepared for the climate-related risks that we already face.
“Investments in better preparation can pay dividends both for the present and for the future.”
Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC, said: “The Working Group report is another important step forward in our understanding of how to reduce and manage the risks of climate change.
The report provides a conceptual map of not only the essential features of the climate challenge but the options for solutions.”
It was seven years ago that the IPCC issued its last major report, and this most recent one, published on Monday, has had its fair share of controversy, with one of its authors pulling out of the writing team just days before publication last week, amidst claims that the report was too “alarmist”.
