UN: Humans Share Blame in Climate Change
Written by Rachel McDevitt
Last updated on September 27, 2013 @ 6:47PM
Created on September 27, 2013 @ 6:37PM
There's been a lot of disagreement over climate change in recent years, but the UN released a report Friday that assigns definite blame on human activity.
The UN is now 95% sure that humans are responsible for half of all climate change.
We are responsible because we drive cars, we run power plants off of coal and oil, and we burn garbage, among other things. All of this puts emissions from carbon-based fuels into the atmosphere, and has been accelerating the rate of climate change over the last 50 years. We see the results of this in more extreme weather like severe tornadoes droughts and floods.
These findings have been painfully obvious to Alaskan fishing villages for years. Lately, Inuit communities have seen extreme flooding, lakes drying up, permafrost melting, and have even had their houses fall into the sea as ocean levels rise. Villages have talked of relocating, but they don't have the money or a unanimous agreement on where to go. For these communities, their way of life is changing rapidly.
Local experts already know the consequences of a warming planet.
"Global emissions of CO2, again, I don't see anything changing too much in the next 30 to 40 years, unfortunately," said Brett Anderson of AccuWeather. "Temperatures overall, the long term trends continue to be upward with temperature. I believe within the next 20 years we are going to see a day in the summer where there may not be any ice anywhere in the northern polar area."
It might take longer for these examples of extreme weather to reach West Virginia, but experts are anticipating floods and droughts to be much worse in the next century.
We will see hotter summers, .and because of that, higher pollen counts that could impact people with allergies or asthma. It's also possible that we will see policy changes that affect the coal industry as we try to cap these emissions. West Virginia hasn't seen major weather events yet, but that doesn't mean it's not immune to the UN's findings.
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