A new report from a United Nations panel of scientists has explained in copious depth that climate change is both very serious and very inevitable for the planet Earth.
According to NBC News, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its massive report Monday. The report has seen parts of its earlier drafts and sections leaked, but it has finally been released in full and in its final form.
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"Changes are occurring rapidly and they are sort of building up that risk," report overall lead author Chris Field, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California, told NBC News.
The report had to go through rigorous revisions and editing sessions before more than 100 governments unanimously approved it. A 44-page preview aimed at world leaders mentions the word "risk" an average of five times per page.
"We can use approaches to managing climate change as a way to build a better world, a world that is more robust, more secure, more vibrant," Field told BBC News. "I think climate can help us find the best part of ourselves. I think that there are opportunities to capitalize on it, and one of the things we need to do is open our eyes to the balances.
"If we're dumb, it's a serious, serious problem, and if we are smart it a serious problem, but one that we can manage."
Among the largest risks, the report said climate change will have adverse effects on the price and availability of food, disease and the health care costs those will incur.
Co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh, told NBC News the climate change problem is much more severe than it was in 2007, the last time such a report was released.
Said Huq, "We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated."
