Scientists Take on Climate Change

"Confronting Climate Change: A Scientific Expert Panel Report"

Written by an expert panel organized by Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society, and sponsored by the UN Foundation. The Academy eBriefing is an overview of the issues covered in the report, which provides a road map for preventing catastrophic global warming and for responding to inevitable changes in Earth's biosphere. Brief video interviews with the five lead authors of the report, and slides from the event, are included.

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Highlights

Climate change is reality and some of its results are now inevitable, but a new report offers a road map for mitigating and adapting to its effects.

Allowing the global average surface temperature to rise more than 2°C to 2.5°C over the next 100 years would sharply increase the risk of catastrophic events. Greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere have already committed the planet to a rise of about 1.5°C.

Climate change will lead to major crop failures, more extreme weather events, and make environmental refugees of tens of millions.

Responding to climate change requires intelligent policymaking and sustained investment in appropriate technology, which could both avert disasters due to climate change while simultaneously boosting living standards worldwide.