14 DAY TRIAL // Barack Obama must have a lot of free time on his hands and be quite bored as a result, a team of about 300 scientists and experts seem to think. Hence their releasing a 1,300-page report on climate change whose target audience is none other than the United States President.
The Guardian informs that the report in question is to be officially unveiled this coming Tuesday, during an event at the White House, and that the folks behind it expect it to guide President Barack Obama's plans to tackle climate change and global warming.
The same source tells us that this latest 1,300-page paper warns that, contrary to what some might think, said phenomena are not just a distant threat that folks in the United States need not worry about for the time being.
On the contrary, climate change and global warming are already happening and are bound to only become worse in the near future, the scientists and specialists who authored the report say.
“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. The evidence is visible everywhere from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean, it goes on,” they write in a draft version of the report.
“Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between,” they add.
Thus, it appears that, since the year 1895 until present day, the average temperature documented in the United States on a yearly basis increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius). Of this increase, 80% occurred since 1980.
What's more, there is evidence to indicate that, over the following few decades, average temperatures in this part of the world will continue to increase. This is expected to translate into longer and more frequent periods of drought, maybe even more wildfires, in the southwest.
On the other hand, folks living in the northeast, the midwest and the Great Plains regions are likely to experience an increase in the number of heavy downpours and, consequently, in the risk of flooding, the specialists who authored this latest report on climate change explain.
“Parts of the country are getting wetter, parts are getting drier. All areas are getting hotter. The changes are not the same everywhere,” Virginia Burkett with the United States Geological Survey told the press in a recent interview.
The 1,300-page climate change report scheduled to be unveiled at the White House on Tuesday should help United States President Barack Obama piece together a new proposal to limit climate change and global warming by curbing greenhouse gas emissions originating from power plants up and running across the country's territory. This proposal is expected to hit the public eye sometime in this year's June.