The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also known as the IPCC, recently released its latest assessment of the current state of scientific understanding regarding climate change. This is the fifth in the series, which began in 1990. At more than 2000 pages and with more than 250 authors, the report is a monumental attempt to bring the world’s best scientists together to see where we stand in regard to human impacts on Earth’s climate.
The results are sobering. The IPCC concludes that “it is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.” Of course, climate change deniers are likely to focus on the other half, but there is no doubt that our planet has gotten warmer and that humans are involved. The rate of warming and the realm of our climate—the range of temperatures in which we normally operate—are much higher than anything we can find in the historical and geologic record for the past 10,000 years.
This assessment, based on the work of thousands of scientists over the past 25 years, seems more solid in its conclusion than the early reports that smoking causes lung cancer. At the moment, a lot of issues face our elected officials. But taking meaningful action on climate change should be at the forefront. It is time to move beyond what enriches the pockets of the few, and do something right that will make life more tolerable for all of humanity.
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Photo, taken on January 15, 2006, courtesy of Bruce Irving via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.