By Beth Mole
23
Climate change is here and the world is unprepared, scientists and policy makers declared multiple times in 2014. Meanwhile, researchers continued to tally the environmental fallout of rising greenhouse gas levels while searching for signs of missing heat from Earth’s surface.
In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the world is generally unprepared to protect vulnerable communities from outcomes such as food shortages and flooding. In April, another IPCC report suggested strategies to cool global warming’s consequences, including adopting more alternative energy sources and capturing more greenhouse gases (SN: 9/6/14, p. 22; SN Online: 4/13/14). In November, the IPCC reemphasized that human activities are to blame for climate change and that a global response is urgently required.