U.N. Climate Panel Warns Speedier Action Is Needed to Avert Disaster
o we, or do we not stand for science and public health? When will you find the courage to stand up for your professed values?
(quoted material and entire article here by Justin Gillis, NYT, April 13, 2014, no connection to this blog)
"countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical
only an intensive worldwide push over the next 15 years can stave off potentially disastrous climatic changes later in the century"
“If we lose another decade, it becomes extremely costly to achieve climate stabilization.”
"the emissions problem is still outrunning the will to tackle it, with global emissions rising almost twice as fast in the first decade of this century than in the last decades of the 20th century. That reflects a huge rush to coal-fired power plants in developing countries that are climbing up the income scale, especially in China,"
"Scientists fear that exceeding the target degrees could potentially produce drastic effects, such as the collapse of ice sheets, a rapid rise in sea levels, difficulty growing enough food, massive die-offs of forests and mass extinctions of plant and animal species."
“The I.P.C.C.'s new report highlights in stark reality the magnitude and urgency of the climate challenge,”... “It shows, even more compellingly than previous studies, that the longer society waits to implement strong measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the more costly and difficult it will become to limit climate change to less than catastrophic levels.”
