New report provides assessment of climate change impacts
In what’s being hailed as the most authoritative assessment of climate change impacts in the U.S., a new report released Tuesday paints a rather gloomy future of extreme weather events, rising sea levels and crop failures.
The 190-gage report, conducted by an interagency team led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows Americans are already being affected by climate change and things could get much worse if nothing is done to reduce the heat-trapping gasses building up on our atmosphere.
“This report stresses that climate change has immediate and local impacts - it literally affects people in their back yards,” said Jane Lubchenco, NOAA’s director. “In keeping with our goals, the information in it is accessible and useful to everyone from city planners and national legislators to citizens who want to better understand what climate change means to them.
Among the main findings: Heat waves will become more frequent and intense; Increased heavy downpours will lead to more flooding; Water supplies will become even more stretched in the West, and Local sea level rise of over three feet will increasingly threaten homes on the coast.
The report also breaks down climate change impacts in the Midwest. Here’s a snippet.
“Average temperatures in the Midwest have risen in recent decades, with the largest increases in winter. The length of the frost-free or growing season has been extended by one week, mainly due to earlier dates for the last spring frost. Heavy downpours are now twice as frequent as they were a century ago. Both summer and winter precipitation have been above average for the last three decades, the wettest period in a century. The Midwest has experienced two record-breaking floods in the past 15 years.”
Uggh.
The study has a particularly unsettling look about the future temperature for Illinois. Basically it shows the state’s climate will look more like Arkansas’ in 30 years and resemble Texas by the end of the century.
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Kim McGuire joined the Post-Dispatch in August 2007. She has covered the environment for almost 10 years while working at The Denver Post and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In 2004, McGuire was named a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 
Oh hogwash!!!
Who do these people think they are, scientist?
Sean Hannity found a report from Newsweek back in 1978 that said that the climate was actually cooling!
Now, who are you going to trust, a bunch of nerdy scientists, or a idiologically parallized idiot?