America Needs To Adjust To Growing Global Warming Impacts

Global warming impacts are only likely to grow in severity over the coming years, according to the vast majority of the world’s climate experts. Scientists predict a rash of likely effects on the world’s environment, including warmer summers and higher temperatures generally. This is almost certain to disrupt the world’s weather patterns, increasing the chance of freak weather events, and perhaps altering the climates of many countries across the world.

Certainly, people are going to have to ready themselves to adapt to this rate of change. A warming world means higher sea levels, which means a much greater risk of flooding, unbearably hot weather, and storms. The US government’s own National Climate Assessment puts it in rather blunter terms: “This National Climate Assessment concludes that the evidence of human-induced climate change continues to strengthen and that impacts are increasing across the country.”

You might work in agriculture, where the effects of a changing climate can seriously affect your livelihood. Higher temperatures and warmer summers can seriously disrupt growing seasons, as well as affecting irrigation. The greater risk of droughts could well put many farmers in the USA out of business, and much sooner than has previously been anticipated.

A changing climate can also have serious effects for homeowners. Higher temperatures can make it hard to live and work in some parts of the USA, especially those places where summers are already very hot, such as Arizona. Owning air conditioning is going to be become a key part of staying healthy, and even alive, with a professional HVAC technician likely to become an ever-more-important person to know.

The 800-page National Climate Assessment makes a point of stating that the effects of climate change are occurring now. Whereas many people, and a number of climate experts, thought that the effects could be many years away from reaching their peak, that opinion is changing. Many scientists assert that the consequences are already being felt, by oyster farmers in Washington State as much as by corn growers in Iowa.
The end of the 21st century could see temperatures rise as much five degrees, a huge increase. Even with aggressive attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they could still rise by as much as 10 degrees, according to the Assessment. Dealing with the consequences of such an increase is likely to be challenging and testing for the human race.

The National Climate Assessment does not carry good news for anyone. Ignoring it, or pretending that the situation does not somehow exist at all, is likely to be very costly, for America and the world.