As the world prepares itself for the upcoming United Nations summit on climate change that will take place in Copenhagen next month, activists, environmental groups, and scientists are cranking up the rhetoric in an effort to raise public awareness about the potentially devastating effects of climate change and to urge world leaders to come to some sort of agreement on carbon emissions. Protestors have taken over rooftops and chimney stacks, environmental groups have made appeals to citizens and politicians, and scientists have released a series of studies meant to promote a resolution at the upcoming summit. Some are optimistic that the leaders of the world will step up and draft a solution, while others are concerned about the politicking that has plagued UN summits in the past.
Recently three of the United Kingdom’s top scientific research groups united to urge countries to act quickly as they say evidence is starting to build that the effects of climate change are not just dangerous but permanent. The Met Office, the Royal Society, and the Natural Environment Research Council said strong evidence continues to emerge about the ramifications of climate change. Since 2007 after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change initially warned about climate change, evidence has continued to mount that the world will face increased droughts, floods, rising seas, and loss of wildlife if immediate action is not taken.
So far all of the predictions by the IPCC have been accurate or even worse than originally thought. Arctic summer ice has ebbed significantly since 2007 and changes in rainfall are in line with what scientists have predicted.
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