From NY Times
The latest assessment of the role of humans in global warming has found with “high confidence” that greenhouse gas emissions are at least partly responsible for a host of changes already under way, including longer growing seasons and shrinking glaciers.
(Wow - that's a ringing endorsement upon which to spend $100 Trillion. I have high confidence that someday I'm gonna be rich.)
That report said there was at least a 90 percent chance that most warming since 1950 had resulted from a continuing buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere. The new report describes the specific effects of climate changes on people and ecology; identifies those species and regions at greatest risk; and describes options for limiting risks.
(I don't mean to be a kill joy, but wasn't 1950 to 1980 a serious cooling period.)
Some of the changes could be beneficial, but most will prove harmful in the long run, the report says.
It finds that global warming caused by humans has almost certainly contributed to recent shifts in ecosystems, weather patterns, oceans and icy regions, and that it will have large and lasting effects on human affairs and on the planet’s web of life in this century.
The draft report predicts a variety of health effects as well, with “increased deaths, disease and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts,” but also “some benefits to health such as fewer deaths from cold.”
Looks like someone on the side of sanity got two cents in... There is a good side.)
Also in the plus column, higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, are contributing to a greener world, according to the draft.
“Based on satellite observations since the early 1980s, there is high confidence that there has been a trend in many regions towards earlier greening of vegetation in the spring and increased net primary production linked to longer growing seasons and increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations,” it said.
From the CTV Report
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its bleakest report yet on the devastating impacts of global warming -- mainly caused by human-induced carbon dioxide pollution.
(But of course, this ISN'T the bleakest report yet - it is the MILDEST report yet. AND IT DOES NOT stae that gloal warming is mainly caused by human-induced CO2.)
However, many say they will never contribute to the process again.
"The authors lost," said one scientist. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC process anymore. I have had it with them,'' he said on condition of anonymity.
(Then why the anonymity? Someone afraid of being a denier?)