The report of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won't be officially released until the 6th of April, and the draft documents for the meeting that precedes the release (Brussels, 2-5 April) “are for government consideration and access is password protected.” Of course, someone leaked a copy or described its contents to a reporter for the Associated Press.
The report of Working Group I on 2 February described the physical science basis and concluded that “[m]ost of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” (emphasis in the original). The report of Working Group II will address “Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.” According to the Associated Press report, “The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people will not have enough water.”
The draft report says that hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than a billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.
...
Many, though not all, of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that is the case, the report says, “most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur.” (source)
Leave a comment