The United Nations recently came out with a draft of a major climate change report which was compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The IPCC is a group of scientists and other experts appointed by the U.N. that periodically reviews and summarizes various research that has been conducted on climate change.

The report has found that runaway growth in greenhouse gas emissions is drastically outpacing the political efforts to reduce emissions. The report stated that this issue is raising the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” in the coming decades. It has also been found that global warming is already responsible for the cutting of world-wide grain production by several percentage points, and could decrease even further if the emissions continue to grow unchecked. Other inclement phenomenon like higher seas, unbearable heat waves, and torrential rain along with other climate extremes have been found to have been caused by man-made emissions.

The report has found that the enormous ice sheet covering Greenland is in danger of irreversible melting if the world temperature continues to increase. Even though the complete meltdown of Greenland’s ice sheet would take centuries, it would be unstoppable and it could result in sea levels rising by about 23 feet. This, along with melting Antarctic ice could relatively easily flood some of the world’s major cities. The draft report also stated that,

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reduction in snow and ice, and in global mean-sea-level rise. The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”

Even though this report is just a draft, it already shines light on some very startling information. The report is intended to summarize earlier reports concerning climate change that were released over the past year. The actual complete report will be released in November of this year.

The report has also found that various companies and governments had located various fuel reserves that were at the very least four times larger than what could be burned to ensure global warming is kept at a tolerable level. The report stated that if our society wants to limit risks to future generations, then they will have to leave the overwhelming majority of these valuable fuels in the ground. The report also found that these efforts are being overwhelmed by the construction of harmful facilities like new coal-burning power plants that will eventually lock in high-emission yields for decades.

The report has cited historical figures to support its claims. From 1970 to 2000, global greenhouse gas had grown at about 1.3 percent per year. However, from 2000 to 2010 that rate had risen to about 2.2 percent per year, and likely to rise within the next decade.

It was found that the acceleration of greenhouse gas emissions were due in no small part to industrialization in China, which now accounts for over half of the world’s coal use. This rise in emissions is largely due to the production and manufacturing of products for consumption in the West.

Thankfully, emissions in most all western countries are now falling, due in part to a new interest in efficiency, and the advent of newer sources of electricity that yield less emissions. However, this decrease in emissions still isn’t enough to counter-balance the rising emissions in developing nations.

Fortunately, the report found that it is still technically feasible to limit global warming to an upper bound of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level. Unfortunately, continuing political delays and roadblocks in the future will make this limit unachievable without severe economic damage, the report claimed.

Luckily, the report did find that efforts to counter climate change are gathering support at the regional and local level in many countries. This support is especially evident in the United States, where Congress is immobile, and has effectively allowed decisions having to do with the climate to be decided by the state legislatures of California, New York, and Massachusetts. Even the U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to use the authority given to him under the Clean Air Act to impose national limits on the emissions of greenhouse gasses, however he is facing political and legal roadblocks that may stop him. The report concluded that continued warming, is likely to “slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing poverty traps and create new ones, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger.”

FSA Connection Questions

1. In the piece, the word irreversible means?
2. The author seems to offer what main idea?
3. Select the best two sentences from the story that supports the idea that catastrophic climate change can be prevented?
4. Select one sentence that best summarizes the work.
5. In the article, the author uses what document to base his story on?