Climate Panel Says To Prepare For Weird Weather

Layzej writes "Extreme weather, such as the 2010 Russian heat wave or the drought in the horn of Africa, will become more frequent and severe as the planet warms, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns in a report released today. Some areas could become 'increasingly marginal as places to live in,' the report concludes. Critics of the report note that 'Governments have in the past considerably weakened the language of IPCC summaries for policymakers,' and that the IPCC process tends to water down even the most obvious conclusions."

Comments

Re:For those that dismiss these news as irrelevant

[siddesu]

Give credit where it is due, Chicken Little, Thailand floods are purely anthropogenic in nature -- a result of deforestation, bad farming practices and non-existing city planning, not global warming.

Re:Climate change ... is nothing new

[riverat1]

2000 years ago, the Sahara was lush green forest ...

Not even close. From the Wikipedia article on the Sahara:

The modern Sahara, though, is not lush in vegetation, except in the Nile Valley, at a few oases, and in the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. The region has been this way since about 4200 years ago.

Before that it was mostly savannah, not forest.

Re:So

[TapeCutter]

The whole "1970's ice age" thing is based on a half truth and misdirection. Before Nixon's clean air act it was a bit of a toss up between warming from GHG's and cooling from aerosols (mainly sulphur that was also causing acid rain). Regan permanently fixed the sulphur problem with a cap and trade system in the early 90's, so now it's mostly warming from GHG's but still a bit of short term cooling from smog. This graph shows the best guesstimates of various forgings.