clair031

Global warming has been proceeding for more than a century as the result of humanity's use of fossil fuels to provide the energy that powers our economy. The excessive, rapid warming we are currently experiencing produces harms and damages from extremes in weather and climate. These include heavy rainfall and flooding, heat waves and drought, rising sea levels, and secondary health problems. Global climate models that successfully reproduce past climate patterns are used to project future behavior of Earth's climate. They show that without significant measures taken to abate further emissions of greenhouse gases warming will continue and indeed will even accelerate, bringing more intense and more extensive extreme events that have the potential to disrupt humanity's socioeconomic well-being. In 1624 John Donne wrote a poetic meditation, “ No Man Is An Island ” : “ No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; … .........

  In both industrialized countries and developing countries there may be those who ask “ why should we care about global warming ?”   After all, many people may not feel that they are affected by warming, and may pay scant attention to reports showing the effects of extreme weather and climate events.   Also, political leaders, especially in developing countries, may place higher priorities on economic development than on greenhouse gas emissions. Global warming has proceeded ever more rapidly over the last century.   Warming occurs by virtue of the greenhouse effect due mostly to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-active gases added to the atmosphere by human activity.   Many recent accounts have catalogued the progressive warming and the resulting harms caused by extreme weather and climate events.   Here we focus on new reports from the technical literature on severe droughts in various parts of the globe and on the harmful effects that they produce....