“New U.N. climate report: Monumental change already here for world’s oceans and frozen regions”

• Editor’s note: Rising sea level events are occurring at an exponentially faster rate than scientists had been predicting. Population centers in the South Sound like Olympia and Tacoma could see neighborhoods uninhabitable in a few years, forcing residents to look inland to move. Yelm will be an attractive place for coastal city residents to eventually relocate.

“More than 100 scientists from around the world contributed to the latest report by the IPCC, which comes on the heels of several other warnings the group has issued recently. Last fall, the IPCC said the world must make rapid, far-reaching changes to energy, transportation and other systems to hold warming below an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, a key threshold in the Paris climate agreement.

“The findings also come as world leaders gathered [last] week at the United Nations for a much-anticipated “climate summit” aimed at injecting new momentum into the flagging effort to persuade countries to do more to move away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner forms of energy. Although dozens of smaller nations did announce plans for coming years, the world’s largest emitters have stopped short of committing to transformational changes.

“‘The climate emergency is a race we are losing — but it is a race we can win if we change our ways now,’ U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told world leaders Tuesday in his latest attempt to spur action. ‘Even our language has to adapt: What once was called ‘climate change’ is now truly a ‘climate crisis.’ … We are seeing unprecedented temperatures, unrelenting storms and undeniable science.'”

“For some major coastal cities, a historical 100-year flood event will happen annually by 2050 even in the most optimistic scenario, the report found,” by Chris Mooney, Brady Dennis, Washington Post.

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