UN Report Ties Climate Change to Extreme Weather

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change of the United Nations has released a draft report that anticipates a rise in record-setting storms, floods and temperatures. The report’s release is Nov 18, reports AFP, but “the overall picture that emerges is one of enhanced volatility and frequency of dangerous weather, leading in turn to a sharply increased risk for large swathes of humanity in coming decades.” Few global citizens need convincing after a year of record-setting floods throughout Asia and the Americas, wildfires in Siberia and the Americas, and severe droughts in the Horn of Africa. Climate-change skeptics, funded by some in the fossil fuel industry, prefer thinking of extreme events as coincidences, unassociated with climate change caused by human activities. Over the course of three years, the IPCC reviewed hundreds of scientific studies and identified regional patterns. Treading cautiously with most predictions, the scientists contend that more record-hot days are a virtual certainty. If global policymakers fail to act, economic uncertainty will grow. – YaleGlobal