Climate change is impacting our globe in serious ways. It's affecting weather patterns and, in consequence, threatening the food security of nations. Now, though, one of the authors of a draft of a new UN report has pulled out of the writing team, and has claimed that his colleagues were being "too alarmist," according to Fox News.
"The draft's become too alarmist," said Richard Tol, a Dutch professor of economics at Sussex University, in an interview with Reuters.
Is it really too alarmist, though? Already, areas all over the globe are being affected by climate change. In the Arctic, ice is melting at an astonishing rate during the summer months and in Japan, the famed cherry blossoms on cherry trees aren't doing nearly as well in a warming world, according to BBC News. They're blossoming at irregular and different times.
The final draft of the UN report states that global warming will disrupt food supplies, slow economic growth and may already be doing irreversible harm to coral reefs and the Arctic, according to Reuters. In fact, global food prices are expected to rise between 3 and 84 percent by 2050 due to warmer temperatures, according to The Associated Press.
"The report is a product of the scientific community and not of any individual author," said the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a statement, according to Reuters. "The report does not comprehensively represent the views of any individual."
While one author may disagree with the new report, the majority of the authors do agree with it. In addition, it seems that Tol has more of a disagreement with the wording of the report rather than the facts of it; he disliked that the IPCC emphasized the risks of climate change more than the opportunities to adapt, according to Reuters. That said, the tide of climate change is indeed a serious issue, and nations should prepare under the threat of rising temperatures that could threaten the world's food supply.
