For thos of you who trust in science, the reports on climate change worsen.

Climate change impacts will kick our butts, and the poor will get it worst (Click here to read more)

Rss@dailykos.com (meteor Blades)

March 31, 2014
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It was an epic British understatement. "The picture it paints with respect to the consequences of continued climate change is rather bleak," wrote The Guardian's Dana Nuccitelli of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel's summary and full report were released Sunday in Yokohoma, Japan, after five days of final discussions and final tweaks of their contents. It is the second of four reports in the fifth assessment by the IPCC. This one is Working Group II's look at "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability." More than 300 authors contributed.

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The bleakness:

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Heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires, more intense storms and other extreme weather, rising seas, saltwater intrusion, whole islands made uninhabitable, ocean acidification, reduced fish populations, crop yield declines, food shortages, species extinctions, severe health effects from spreading disease, massive displacement of human populations and violent conflicts will be or already are the lethal products of climate change that will all worsen even if action is taken immediately. And get much, much worse if it is not.

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As the report puts it: "Increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts." And, "Throughout the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger."