As the brutal election season wraps up, the nation \u2013 and the world \u2013 received another dire warning of the growing dangers of global warming.\u00a0 While the issue has been almost non-existent in the nation\u2019s political debates, there is no doubt that it is the most important issue facing the world.<\/p>\n
The experts convened by the United Nations \u2013known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change \u2013 argued in their most recent report that failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.<\/p>\n
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body appointed by the world\u2019s governments to advise them on global warming and potential solutions. The panel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its reports on the climate crisis.<\/p>\n
The new report, “Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report” was released on November 1.\u00a0 It\u2019s 175-pages long and provides a synopsis of reports that the panel has issued over the past year.\u00a0 It completes a five-year effort by the panel to analyze and report on the most recent scientific climate research.<\/p>\n
It is the fifth report from the panel since 1990, each one stating with greater certainty that the climate is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.<\/p>\n
The report declared that “Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”<\/p>\n
The report went on to observe that “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”<\/p>\n
Appearing at the release of the report, the United Nations secretary general issued an appeal for governmental actions.\u00a0 “Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. \u00a0Leaders must act. \u00a0Time is not on our side.”<\/p>\n
The report found that climate change is not a distant threat, but is impacting the world today.\u00a0 The report cited mass die-offs of forests, including those in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands<\/em> of people.<\/p>\n The report also warned of the impact of climate change on the world\u2019s food supply.\u00a0 It noted that recently agriculture worldwide has become increasingly unstable, with sudden price increases leading to riots and, in a few cases, the collapse of governments.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, not much is happening to address this environmental catastrophe-in-the-making.\u00a0 Due largely to the fossil fuel industry\u2019s aggressive efforts to cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific evidence, plus its well-funded political campaigns, governments \u2013 particularly in the United States \u2013 have failed to tackle this problem.<\/p>\n In fact, the major environmental debate in the 2014 New York elections was over how to increase<\/em>, not decrease<\/em>, the mining of fossil fuels, through the controversial method known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking.<\/p>\n The IPCC report urged that the world must find a way to leave the vast majority of the world\u2019s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground.\u00a0 Yet, in New York and across the nation, the debate is over how to extract more<\/em>, not less<\/em>, fossil fuels.<\/p>\n And while the burning of natural gas causes less warming problems than dirtier fuels like coal, the extraction<\/em> of gas is accompanied by the emission of methane.\u00a0 According to the IPCC, methane is 34 times stronger a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.\u00a0 Thus, the benefits of switching from coal to natural gas are offset by these methane emissions.<\/p>\n The average American voter would know none of this from the election debates raging across the country.\u00a0 Yet for all of us, the failure to debate this issue could have devastating \u2013 and in some parts of the world deadly \u2013 consequences.<\/p>\n Hopefully, New York\u2019s public officials will show the nation what enlightened environmental policies \u2013 relying on alternative fuels and keeping fossil fuels in the ground \u2013 should look like.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all for now.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be keeping an eye on the Capitol and will talk to you again next week.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the brutal election season wraps up, the nation \u2013 and the world \u2013 received another dire warning of the growing dangers of global warming.\u00a0 While the issue has been almost non-existent in the nation\u2019s political debates, there is no doubt that it is the most important issue facing the world. The experts convened by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}