Global Warming Report Edited for Graphic Content

Global Warming Report Edited for Graphic Content

Reporting the severity of global warming largely depends on who has the most at stake economically, with those who will be impacted the most having very little say in the matter, while the countries that generate the greatest amount of greenhouse gasses have been actively trying to downplay the threat—and the role of human activity—in regards to climate change.

A new global warming report issued Friday by the United Nations paints a near-apocalyptic vision of Earth's future: hundreds of millions of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction. Even the poorest citizens of industrialized nations will likely bear the brunt of such shortages.

The report is the second of four scheduled to be issued this year by the U.N., which marshaled more than 2,500 scientists to give their best predictions of the consequences of a few degrees increase in temperature. The first report, released in February, said global warming was irreversible but could be moderated by large-scale societal changes. That report said with 90% confidence that global warming was caused by humans. The report also indicated that the world's biggest polluters — the industrialized nations — bore a great deal of responsibility to reverse this trend.

The language in this most recent report was softened because some nations lobbied for last-minute changes to the dire predictions. Negotiations led to deleting some timelines for events, as well as some forecasts on how many people would be affected on each continent as global temperatures rose. An earlier draft of the report specified that water would become increasingly scarce for up to a billion people in Asia by 2100. A table outlining how various levels of carbon dioxide emissions corresponded to increasing temperatures and their effects was also removed.

The actions were seen by critics as an attempt to ease the pressure on industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are gradually warming the planet.

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