Reading the new IPCC report: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

What impacts will climate change have on the future? What do they mean for higher education?

Today we continue our group reading of the new IPCC report, focusing on the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability document produced by Working Group II. We’ll dive into the “Summary for Policymakers.” Next week we’ll following up with the “Technical Summary.”

We’ll begin with a summary of the high points, then shift to questions.

(For more info on this reading, click here.)

The “Summary” is divided into three parts: risk, adaptation, and resilience development.

1: RISK

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.

This section details the many risks humanity and the rest of the world run from global warming. And there are a *lot*. I won’t repeat them all here, but will just hit some of the highlights, like “increases to the frequency and intensity of climate and weather extremes, including hot extremes on land and in the…