CLIMATE: On alleged UN reports

A Coeur d’Alene Press letter to the editor (“FOSSIL FUELS: So what if climate changes?”) concluded with “...the UN committee on climate change has recently (and quietly) declared that climate change is not a threat to our planet.”

The UN became concerned about climate change in 1994. At that time, their message was: 

• Recognize that there was a problem. Remember, in 1994, when the UNFCCC took effect, there was less scientific evidence than there is now. The UNFCCC borrowed a very important line from one of the most successful multilateral environmental treaties in history (the Montreal Protocol, in 1987): it bound member states to act in the interests of human safety even in the face of scientific uncertainty.

• Set a lofty but specific goal. The ultimate objective of the Convention was to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system.” 

For more than 30 years, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization has told us how terrible things are getting with global climate change. This year’s annual “State of the Climate” report is a compendium of climate change facts and figures collected throughout the previous 365 days. It’s an authoritative look at the state of our global climate and its increasingly precarious condition.

The record high levels of greenhouse gases in the air are also why so many extreme events, from heat waves to floods, are now occurring with greater regularity and severity.

My preference is to trust the actual recent annual report.

PHIL WARD

Coeur d’Alene