clair031

Summary .   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued Part 3 of its Fifth Assessment Report, “Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change ”, on April 13, 2014 .   Part 3 reviews recent historical results on the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.   It then presents extensive modeling results projecting possible gas levels by 2100 under various emission scenarios. The scenarios show that global action to reduce emissions to date have been insufficient to achieve a desired goal, that of limiting the world’s average temperature increase to 2ºC (3.6ºF) above the level before the industrial revolution began.   This means that the world will have to invest in mitigation more intensively.   Only certain stringent scenarios suffice to meet this objective; other more lenient ones yield higher greenhouse gas levels that result in a temperature rise higher than the goal. If we picture the world’s energy economy as a supertanker with high inertial...

Summary .   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued   Part 2 of its Fifth Assessment Report, “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”, in March 2014.   Part 2 discusses the need for and implementation of adaptation strategies for coping with the adverse effects of global warming. Warming causes harms to human populations and natural environments around the globe.   Because of effects such as loss of water resources, lower crop yields, and exposure to extreme weather events, human wellbeing is severely affected. The world needs to adapt to these new climate realities.   Part 2 presents strategies for developing adaptation programs, emphasizing that this process depends importantly on risk management and the repetitive cycling of planning, implementation and assessment.   A major difficulty envisioned is procuring adequate funding for these endeavors.   Introduction . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IP...