Head of IPCC Warns That We Need to Act Now

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Friday that "only seven years remained for stabilising emissions of global-warming gases at a level widely considered safe."

He warned that to keep temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), which is the goal of the European Union, we need to keep greenhouse gas concentrations at current levels.

However, Pachauri also warmed that this goal may need to be revisited because "evidence was mounting that climate change was accelerating faster than thought. Heatwaves and floods were increasing, and higher temperatures were having a far-reaching effect on glaciers and snowfall."

Pachauri’s warning is hard to miss. In the central United States, the last few decades have brought more heavy summer rainfall events and increased likelihood of devastating floods. While no single storm or flood can be directly attributed to global warming, changing climate conditions are at least partly responsible for past trends. Yet our media gives very little attention to global warming’s role in our changing weather.

Somehow we need to break into the TV world to connect the dots.