Working Group II of the forthcoming Third Assessment Report of the IPCC has thoroughly reviewed the recent scientific literature on the potential impacts of various consistent climate change scenarios, and used this information to derive the differential vulnerability of sectors and regions to anthropogenic global warming.
This is a crucial step forward, as almost all climate debates so far were focussed on the "attribution problem" only, while the serious consequences of humanity's interference with the atmosphere were marginalized.
Chapter 19 of Working Group II has now summarized the main reasons for concern, i.e., the ultimate cause for steering away from socioeconomic "business as usual". There are five bottom lines of evidence, concerning
1. the threat to unique natural & cultural systems;2. the risks from extreme climate events;3. the inequitable distribution of impacts;4. the risk of globally negative aggregate impacts; and5. the dangers associated with inadvertently triggered large-scale discontinuitiesin the planetary machinery.
The major insights from this first systematic climate vulnerability assessment will be presented and illustrated.