The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tomorrow will release its fourth report on global warming, an assessment that determines with "high confidence" that warming from human-generated greenhouse gases has already started to alter ecosystems around the world, usually for the worst. Although colder regions will have longer growing seasons as the temperature ticks up, other parts of the world will experience increased drought, fires and flooding and more hunger and infectious diseases. Poor countries are at greater risk than wealthy ones.
The IPCC gave both The New York Times and The Washington Post a summary or an advance draft of the report. You can read more about it here and here. Some of the key points:
--water in glaciers and snow will melt, cutting water supply to regions where more than one sixth of the earth's inhabitants live.
--20 to 30 percent of the world's species could go extinct if the temperature rises between 2.4 and 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit
--coral reefs will bleach and die off as water temperatures continue to rise.
Photo: Justin Casp
