Here are some more details from last Friday's IPCC report on the effects of global warming, from the Prescott Herald. From the article, "Chicago and Los Angeles will likely to face increasing heat waves. Severe storm surges could hit New York and Boston. And cities that rely on melting snow for water may run into serious shortages. According to the panel, global warming is already having an effect on daily life but when the Earth gets a few degrees hotter, the current inconvenience could give way to danger and even death...
"Meanwhile, it said, just over 40 percent of the water supply to southern California is likely to be vulnerable by the 2020s due to losses of the Sierra Nevada and Colorado River basin snow packs. Cities could also be at risk from high tides and storm surges, it said. Boston's transportation network may also be at risk from a sea level rise and the increased probability of a powerful storm surge, it said. By the mid-21st century, regions in Alaska and Canada's Northwestern Territories are likely to be at 'moderate to high risk' due to coastal erosion and thawing of permafrost including the report said. North American producers of wood and timber could suffer losses of between $1 billion and $2 billion a year during the 21st century if climate change also sparks changes in diseases, insect attacks and forest fires, the panel said."
More on the IPCC report from Nature. They write, "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not known as a bearer of good news. In February, it reported that human activities are almost certainly causing the planet to warm. On 6 April in Brussels, Belgium, it delivered an even more sobering message: that billions of the world's poorest citizens are at risk of hardship and disease as a result of climate change. Attention is now shifting from arguments over whether the world is warming to what should be done about it. And all six-billion-plus on the planet should be concerned, the IPCC's report implies. The people most vulnerable will be those who live at or near sea level, often crowded into cities along the coast. But drought, disease and extreme weather events will also become more frequent around the world, threatening the lives and livelihoods of countless more...
"The Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability report is the second instalment of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment, a summary of the current state of knowledge about climate change. The third assessment was published in 2001. Crucially, this report is the first to link actual data on how natural systems are responding to the amount of warming they have experienced. 'For the first time we are no longer arm-waving with models,' says Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group II. Authors compiled more than 29,000 data sets, on everything from glaciers to the timing of spring foliage, and compared the trends with the amount of regional warming observed in each area since 1970. In more than 90% of cases, the changes in natural systems were consistent with predictions of how they would behave in a warming world...
"One of the cruel ironies is that among the few set to gain, at least in the short term, from the agricultural benefits conferred by climate warming are those with the highest greenhouse-gas emissions. And yet the central message of the report is that climate change is likely to hit hardest those who can do least to defend themselves."
"2008 pres"
6:20:00 AM 
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