Saturday, September 28, 2013

The U.S. Government Report & The IPCC Fifth Report Are In Agreement

In 1988 in the United Nations (UN), based on the scientific climate change consensus around the world, formed the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC was established and designed with a requirement that it produce periodic reports on the status of the global climate system.

Soon afterward, in 1990, the U.S. Congress passed and President G.W. Bush signed into law a bill that formed a similar U.S.A. group to study civilization's ongoing damage to the global climate system.

Like the IPCC, the American group was required to do a similar report every few years.

On Friday the IPCC released portions of its Fifth Assessment Report.

Likewise, some months back the U.S. Government group released its periodic report:
Climate Change and the American People

Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. This report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee concludes that the evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably since the last National Climate Assessment report, written in 2009. Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont have observed changes in their local climate that are outside of their experience. So, too, have coastal planners from Florida to Maine, water managers in the arid Southwest and parts of the Southeast, and Native Americans on tribal lands across the nation.

Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.

Other changes are even more dramatic. Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.

Scientists studying climate change confirm that these observations are consistent with Earth’s climatic trends. Long-term, independent records from weather stations, satellites, ocean buoys, tide gauges, and many other data sources all confirm the fact that our nation, like the rest of the world, is warming, precipitation patterns are changing, sea level is rising, and some types of extreme weather events are increasing. These and other observed climatic changes are having wide-ranging impacts in every region of our country and most sectors of our economy.

(Government Climate Change Report). The IPCC report is in accord with the U.S. Government report:

The true take-home message of the latest IPCC report is crystal clear:
Climate change is real and caused by humans, and it continues unabated. We will see far more dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts in the decades ahead if we do not choose to reduce global carbon emissions. There has never been a greater urgency to act than there is now.

The latest IPCC report is simply an exclamation mark on that already-clear conclusion.

(The IPCC, Climate Change and Bad Faith Attacks on Science). Keep up resistance to Oil-Qaeda.

"Wild Life" - by Paul McCartney