Message to the IPCC: 'Calm Down'

Speaking of the handiness of catchy crutch phrases, (e.g. "calm down"), an article in this morning's Detroit News warning of the second instalment of this year's UN report on global warming seems to call for one:

"Global warming could hit the entire world like a tsunami, wiping out thousands of species unable to adapt to a hotter climate and making billions of people vulnerable to water shortages and the inundation of coastal cities, says a draft summary of a UN sponsored report on climate change scheduled for release on Friday....

"The report is the collective work of more than 1,000 of the world's scientists, including many from Canada, and has a measured and cautious tone."

If this is a measured and cautious tone, I have to believe a slightly less measured and cautious tone would have required an attached video clip of the destruction of planet Alderaan in the first Star Wars.

Here is the article:

Global warming warning

U.N. reports climate changes are already impacting world's fauna and flora with northward march of plants and animals.

Martin Mittelstaedt / Toronto Globe and Mail

Global warming could hit the entire world like a tsunami, wiping out thousands of species unable to adapt to a hotter climate and making billions of people vulnerable to water shortages and the inundation of coastal cities, says a draft summary of a UN sponsored report on climate change scheduled for release on Friday.

The summary also says there is a 90 percent likelihood that global warming is already beginning to change the world's rich biological heritage of fauna and flora, typified by such recently observed phenomena as the northward march of many animal and plant species.
"Many natural systems, on all continents and in some oceans, are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increase," the draft concluded.

It also forecasts a massive upheaval in the world's ecosystems, with as much as half the Arctic tundra being replaced by forest if warming reaches 4 degrees, a level of extreme heating that also has the potential to wipe out about 45 percent of the Amazon's tree species.

The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the second in a series of three widely anticipated studies on global warming to be issued this year by the body. The report is the collective work of more than 1,000 of the world's scientists, including many from Canada, and has a measured and cautious tone.

The new report outlines the far-reaching impact that global warming is already having and expected to have over the next few centuries on the world's environment, ranging from freshwater fish to mangroves and boreal forests.