From Climate Change Is Already Here, Says Massive Government Report, Huff Post Politics, May 6, 2014
“Climate change is no longer a distant threat, but a real and present danger in the United States, according to a government report issued Tuesday.
“The report is the latest update from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and details ways that climate change — caused predominantly by the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — is already being felt across the country.
“‘Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,’ the report says in its introduction. …
“The report notes that American society and its infrastructure were built for the past climate — not the future. It highlights examples of the kinds of changes that state and local governments can make to become more resilient. One of the main takeaways, said David Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell University and a coauthor of the chapter on the Northeast, is that ‘you don’t want to look at the weather records of yesteryear to determine how to set up your infrastructure.’
“This report, said Wolfe, signals that the country is ‘beginning to move beyond the debate about whether climate change is real or not, and really getting down to rolling up our sleeves’ and addressing it.”