New York Times: “Like a Terror Movie”

Societies delayed reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and must now prepare to handle multiple disasters related to climate change – hurricanes, wildfires, flooding that kill and destroy property. A paper for Nature Climate Change projects future trends. “In a scientific world marked by specialization and siloed research, this multidisciplinary effort by 23 authors reviewed more than 3,000 papers on various effects of climate change,” explains John Schwartz for the New York Times. “The authors determined 467 ways in which those changes in climate affect human physical and mental health, food security, water availability, infrastructure and other facets of life on Earth.” The paper “suggests that, by 2100, unless humanity takes forceful action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, some tropical coastal areas of the planet, like the Atlantic coast of South and Central America, could be hit by as many as six crises at a time.” The study’s authors concede that some studies are conservative, and others carry bias by focusing on “negative effects.” People who lost homes and barely escaped wildfires in California or typhoons in southern China share similar bias. Climate change is underway, and urgent response is required. – YaleGlobal