The real damage of climate change

(NaturalNews) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) claims that potential future effects of climate change will include an increase in wildfires, longer periods of drought and an increase in the intensity and duration of tropical storms. William D. Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, writes about many issues related to climate change of which the general public is not aware.

Climate change is an international issue, Nordhaus claims. Emissions in any one place affect the climate everywhere and will affect it for centuries to come. No single nation is responsible for the increased amount of greenhouse gases and no nation can solve this crisis alone.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), is made up of over 1,300 scientists from around the world. NASA scientists have high confidence that the global temperatures around the world will continue to rise for many years to come. The IPCC works on calculating the economic means necessary in order to reduce emissions to meet environmental demands.

The IPCC forecasts that the temperature will increase by 2.5 degrees to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years. The IPCC also alleges that the increase in the global mean temperature of less than 1.8 degrees to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (above 1990 levels) will influence beneficial outcomes in some regions, while harmfully impacting others.

"Taken as a whole," the IPCC says, "the range of evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change is likely going to be significant and will increase over time."

In America alone, there will be a decrease in the snow-pack in Rocky Mountain area, a 5% to 20% increase in yields of rain-fed agriculture, an increase in the occurrences and intensity of heat waves in cities where they are currently experienced today.

In Africa, by 2020, an estimated 75 million to 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress, rain-fed agriculture could be reduced up to 50% in some regions and access to food and agriculture production could be severely compromised.

Difficulty Breathing

Medline reports that climate change will cause difficulty breathing in the summer, as reported in a recent study. This report from HealthDay News stated that the ozone air pollution levels in the United States could rise 70% by 2050 due to climate change. All regions within the continental United States will have at least a few days of unhealthy air during the summers. However, majorly polluted areas on the West Coast, East Coast and Midwest where people presently encounter high ozone levels could be faced with unhealthy air for most of the summer in future years.

Luckily, the team of researchers believes that an immediate and sharp decline in ozone emissions will have a lasting and dramatic impact on the air that people breathe.

Sources for this article include:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2...
http://climate.nasa.gov/effects
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pno115.html
http://books.google.com
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/full...

About the author:
Lindsey Alexander, contributor of health news and information