The latest report (PDF of summary) from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that the earth’s climate and ecosystems are already being affected, for better and mostly for worse, by greenhouse gases, The New York Times reports.
In February, the IPCC released a report that said for the first time that global warming is “very likely” man-made.
The new report said that shifting climate patterns would bring benefits in some places but significant hardship and ecological losses in others.
The panel said the long-term outlook for all regions was for trouble should temperatures rise 3 to 5 degrees fahrenheit or so, with consequences ranging from the likely extinction of perhaps a fourth of the world’s species to eventual inundation of coasts and islands inhabited by hundreds of millions of people, the NY Times writes. But it said that efforts to reduce emissions, could reduce, delay or avoid some harmful outcomes.