http://www.cultureofscience.com/2011/11/18/managing-the-extreme-impacts-of-climate-change/

Almost 24 months ago, I boarded a plane to Panama City, Panama to attend a meeting of over a hundred people I had never met. Unfortunately, I had gotten a haircut the day before. I walked into the salon with shoulder-length mousey-brown hair, and walked out with bright red pin curls. I don’t know what happened in there, but when I met the new Lead Authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for a Special Assessment on Managing the Extreme Impacts of Climate Change (http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/), I was a tiny bit embarrassed. Lucky for me, none of them had ever seen me before and some even thought it was real.

The group was from all over the world, a body balanced across the developed and developing nation divide reflected in every color and style of dress. Between that November, 2009 and today, many became friends. Maybe more importantly, we brought together our collective knowledge on climate change, disasters and adaptation to assess how the world should accommodate the impending changes.

We met in four different countries around the world over the last two years and developed a report that is bound to have a tremendous ripple effect. I mostly worked on the chapter focused on local impacts of climate change. This is a topic close to my heart as I have seen how extreme events and disasters related to climate have rocked many lives. In my studies, I met a woman in Louisiana who got West Nile Virus – a disease fostered by increased rainfall and warming temperatures. She is still unable to walk seven years later (go to www.evidencebasedmedia.net to see her story). I have spent endless days with a couple in Los Angeles shooting a new documentary. They lost their home and memories to a wildfire, a disaster expected to get much worse with drought. I’ve been to inner city Philadelphia to interview older adults where heat waves have already killed hundreds.

The other people I met writing the report have studied disasters around the world. Some of them have devoted their lives to accurately reporting how the climate will change in the future. Together, we spent time missing our families and sitting in a room for endless hours, writing not to get paid, but to do scientific service. Yet, despite the dedication by this group and other IPCC authors, these scientists have been attacked constantly. Last week, Fox News published an article calling them “a slapdash, rule-breaking, not-to-be-trusted teenager.” This was not the first criticism of these authors, nor will it be the last. Little does Fox, or these other critics know, how to address the 18,784 review comments sent by reviewers all over the world. That is where our expertise comes in, and where their lack of it becomes apparent.

Maybe if the rest of the world understood a bit more about our experience authoring this report, they’d stop blaming us for trying to give warning to a warming world. Maybe then, they’d join in educating themselves about their own risks and prevent the worst.

for the DailyClimate.org
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/11/ipcc-extremes

For the first time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has brought together research on climate change, adaptation and disasters. This innovation moves beyond scientific warnings raised in other IPCC reports to provide a broad – and alarming – review of what needs to be done to prepare for climate-related impacts.

Our state of preparation will be key. That’s the good news in this report.
I helped author the report because I am deeply concerned about what happens to the least advantaged when extreme events hit. As a researcher who has worked with communities impacted by weather disasters, I know how keenly climate-related catastrophes are felt at the most local level – in homes, schools, religious groups and other communities. If people understand the effects of their greenhouse gas emissions, hopefully they will strive to cut these emissions to avoid suffering the consequences of inaction.

The report released today – a summary the Special Assessment on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation – tells us that heat waves are very likely to increase, ands droughts, sea level rise and extreme precipitation events will likely escalate. The traditional idea that the poor are most vulnerable continues to ring true, but the shifting spatial and temporal scale of these extreme events means that no one will escape the ravages of climate change. No one.

Less familiar planet
The massive economic ramifications of these events, as we have seen in the past year, are very likely to increase. Our world is transforming into a warmer, less familiar planet, a place where development is more expensive and disasters take greater tolls. Many of these impacts are connected to our own choices – how close we live to a floodplain, how much energy we use, whether we develop the desert and so forth. Some events driven by climate change may be small, yet result in massive damage.

Our state of preparation will be key. That’s the good news in this report.

We have the power to take action and prevent or at least minimize the worst outcomes. Generally the costs of preparing are less than the costs of impacts. Scientists have been saying for years that curbing greenhouse gas emissions is critical to preventing climate change. The science has evolved: Now most research suggests that the climate has already begun to change.

We can still avoid the worst calamities by changing our behavior. In the end, we can’t determine exactly who will be hit by what, but we all need to take action. The most recent survey of the science says that must happen today, not tomorrow.