Climate Change Could Have Irreversible Effects, Warns UN

The United Nations warned in its latest report that if industrialized nations don’t take steps to reduce greenhouse emissions now, the consequences of climate change could be irreversible. These consequences include widespread droughts, violent storms, species extinctions, and the melting of the polar ice caps.

In its report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said hundreds of authors and 30,000 scientific papers were 95 percent certain that the planet is warming and humans are mostly the cause.

The report said solutions exist to transition to a low-carbon economy. However, governments need to implement appropriate policies and institutions.

The goal for many governments is to prevent temperatures from crossing a 2-degree Celsius increase. The IPCC says in order to achieve this, greenhouse gas emissions need to fall at least 70 percent around the world by 2050 and to zero by 2100.

One of the solutions the UN panel proposed is carbon budgets. These budgets allocate a quantity of greenhouse emissions that governments can manage. The IPCC’s research suggests at current rates the carbon budget will be depleted within decades.

Other policies include planting forests and capturing and storing carbon dioxide. The captured gases would then be stored underground.

Danish Minister of Climate Energy and Buildings Rasmus Helveg Peterson said in a statement, “This report convinces me that we need to phase out of fossil fuels sooner than we thought. The bigger the problem gets, the more expensive and more difficult it will be for us and for our children to solve it.”

However, some still oppose that climate change is real. Additionally, Time reported that only 54 percent of people in the U.S. believe climate change is caused by human activity.

John Coleman, a weather forecaster and a founder of the Weather Channel, said man-made global warming has never happened and never will. The forecaster told CNN that scientists reach these conclusions so they can keep receiving government funds.

CEO of the Weather Channel David Kenny said the channel has supported that Earth is warming since 2007. Their statement cites “strong evidence that the majority of the warming over the past century is a result of human activities.”

By the end of 2015, ministers from more than 190 nations aim to sign a deal that will restrain greenhouse emissions in all nations. According to the UN’s report, these countries will have to wean off fossil fuels entirely to stop climate change.

Climate Change Could Have Irreversible Effects, Warns UN