Climate Change: Already Being Felt Around the World

Climate change is already leaving its mark on countries all around the world, damaging food crops, spreading disease and melting glaciers.

This is the conclusion of a new report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on which Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, is a co-author.

“Previously the IPCC was accused of being very conservative,” Yohe told The Guardian (UK) newspaper. “This allows them to be less conservative without being open to criticism that they are just trying to scare people to death.”

According to the article, nearly 500 people must sign off on the exact wording of the summary, including the 66 expert authors, 271 officials from 115 countries, and 57 observers.

“But governments have already signed off on the critical finding that climate change is already having an effect, and that even a small amount of warming in the future could lead to ‘abrupt and irreversible changes’, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

‘In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans,’ the final report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say.”

Read more here.

Yohe also discussed the report with The Washington Post.

Watch a webinar with Yohe on climate change and the new IPCC report here.