LA Times: Scientists sound the alarm in climate change report
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Climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels is already affecting life on every continent and in the oceans, and the window is closing rapidly for governments to avert the worst damage expected to occur later this century, scientists warned in one of the loudest alarms yet sounded by the international scientific community
The report, to be issued Sunday, arrives as international negotiators prepare to meet in Lima, Peru, in December to establish parameters for an eventual agreement on cutting heat-trapping emissions, a goal that has eluded the international community since talks began more than 20 years ago on the necessity of action. Negotiators are aiming to sign a deal in Paris in December 2015.
Written by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which regularly reviews and synthesizes the latest climate research, the report says there are more heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere than at any time in at least the last 800,000 years, and that most of them came from the combustion of fossil fuels since the advent of widespread industrialization in the late 1800s. The effects of global warming are already being felt in rising sea levels, ocean acidification and more extreme weather events, especially heat waves and droughts, which have begun to affect crop yields and water availability.
The steps taken so far by countries to reduce or mitigate emissions are not enough, the scientists said, and under the business-as-usual scenario, the world runs the risk of consequences so grave that they are irreversible and cannot be adapted to.
Derby People's Assembly 