There was no mincing of words in what is the second of three reports on climate change to come from a UN group: Climate change is going to have "severe, pervasive, and irreversible" effects on the world in the decades to come, reads the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the work of some 2,000 experts and 309 lead authors, reports the Independent. Many of those authors are trotting out similar lines: Nobody on the planet will escape its effects, they warn. "No place in the world is immune from them," said one; "nobody on this planet is going to be untouched," said another.
The report found that the evidence in favor of climate change is overwhelming (as one scientist puts it, "we're not talking about hypothetical events"), and governments need to act to mitigate the "increasingly clear" threats before time runs out, reports the New York Times. "Ignorance is no longer a good excuse," said the chief of the World Meteorological Organization, who described the report as the "most solid evidence you can get in any scientific discipline." Along with hits to public health, the potential for battles over land and resources, and possible mass migrations, food security was highlighted as a major concern, the BBC reports. Crop yields and fish catches are expected to drop in many regions as climate change takes hold, researchers warn. (One country that's particularly threatened: Bangladesh.)