Impacts of Climate Change

A System Vulnerability Approach to Consider the Potential Impacts to 2050 of a Mid-Upper Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scenario

Climate change is a real and growing problem for the United States and for the world. As urgency around the issue continues to grow, so too does the scientific consensus that changes to Earth’s climate will enormously affect the planet’s future and the futures of all who inhabit it. Anthropogenic climate change is now widely considered to have the potential not just to cause perturbations in the weather, but also to create major discontinuities in many complex natural and human systems, including ecosystems, economies, human settlements, and even political institutions.

Over the past two decades, and especially in the last few years, climate change has become one of the most heavily researched subjects in science. Yet climate change impact studies remain at the low end of usefulness for policymakers and others; they are not predictive enough to be actionable because the exact nature of the events that will jar the planet in the near- and long-term future—the wheres, whens, and hows of climate change—remains both unknown and unknowable.

See full Article.