1. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented conclusive evidence that profound changes are underway in the global climate system, including the oceans.
2. Atmospheric concentrations of long-lived, heat-trapping GHGs are at unprecedented levels, and the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past 30 years has nearly doubled.
3. Global temperatures are rising due to increasing anthropogenic GHG emissions, and the rate of warming has accelerated over the past 50 years.
4. Large-scale increases in the heat content of the world’s oceans have been observed since the Mid-20th Century that cannot be explained by natural climate variability.
5. The Arctic Ocean sea ice is shrinking far faster than predicted and could be in irreversible decline.
6. Global average sea level has risen ~0.2 meters (6 inches) in the past century, and the rate of sea level rise has nearly doubled since the early 1990s.
7. Ocean warming and associated changes are already strongly affecting natural biological systems on land and at sea, and many marine plankton and zooplankton species at the base of ocean food webs are responding faster than terrestrial species.
8. Overfishing can render both fish stocks and ecosystems more vulnerable and less resilient to the effects of climate change.
9. Ocean absorption of anthropogenic CO2 is altering the seawater chemistry of the world’s oceans through a process known as ocean acidification, causing surface seas to become increasingly corrosive to marine calcifying organisms such as reef-building corals and shell-forming plankton, crustaceans and mollusks.
10. Ocean warming and acidification threaten the continued existence of coral-dominated ecosystems in the 21st Century, as well as thousands of reef-dependent species.
11. Global climate change threatens many vulnerable species with extinction and will be one of the major drivers of species extinctions in the 21st Century.
12. Climate change promotes more frequent and severe hypoxia (oxygen depletion) and dead zones in estuaries and coastal waters, as well as the growth of harmful algal blooms.
13. Warming oceans increase the frequency and/or intensity of tropical hurricanes and typhoons.
14. The risk of abrupt climate change increases as the human disturbance of the climate system grows, threatening the ability of human and natural systems to adapt.
15. Climate change is a serious global and national security threat and a threat to human health and welfare requiring immediate action to reduce GHG emissions.
16. Additional warming greater than 2°C above pre-industrial levels is likely to be dangerous, raising the risk of abrupt climate change.
17. Many scientists think that current atmospheric GHG concentrations are already in the dangerous zone.

In light of the foregoing, it should be clear that climate change is a serious global and national security threat, a threat to human health and the environment, and a threat to life on earth as we know it, requiring urgent and concerted efforts by all nations to reduce GHG emissions as rapidly as possible in order to address the impacts of global climate change on present and future generations.

The global nature of anthropogenic climate change requires the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the key instrument for addressing climate change internationally (U.N. Resolution 63/281, 11 June 2009). The UNFCCC, to which the United States is a Party, has as its ultimate objective the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system (UNFCCC 1992). Deep cuts in global emissions of GHGs will be required to achieve that objective (U.N. Resolution 63/32, 3 April 2009).   Network Step >>