10 Things to Know about the IPCC Climate Report

http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-10-things-you-need-to-know-from-the-new-ipcc-climate-report/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily%2520Nov%25203&utm_campaign=daily

The latest IPCC report is out, and the news is not happy.
The chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, called today’s report the “strongest, most robust and most comprehensive” to come out of the IPCC, which has been tracking climate change since 1988. It is “yet another wake-up call to the global community that we must act together swiftly and aggressively,” the White House said in a statement.
The report’s language is stronger than in years past: Warming is “unequivocal,” and the changes we’re seeing are pervasive, it states clearly. We must take action quickly to cut our dependence on fossil fuels, it warns. If we don’t, we’ll face “further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”

1. We humans really, truly are responsible for climate change, and ignoring that fact doesn’t make it less true. 
2. Climate change is already happening. Each of the past three decades has been warmer than the last, and warmer than any decade since we started keeping records. Sea levels are rising. Arctic ice cover is shrinking. Crop yields are changing — more often than not, getting smaller. It has been getting wetter, and storms and heat waves are getting more intense.
3. … and it is going to get far worse: “Heat waves will occur more often and last longer … extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions. The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise,” the report states. If we stick to our current path, we could see 3.7 to 4.8 degrees Celsius of warming — or even more — by the end of the century.