Where to start?

If you are new to the issue of climate change, the extent of online and published resources can be overwhelming.

Don't worry: it's overwhelming to those who have been in this field for their entire careers.

Just keep in mind that “where to start?” is a very reasonable question.

· Here are some very general "about" pages that might be helpful:

· While EarthWeb.info provides 70+ individual pages on varying aspects of climate change,

two pages of general information include:

· The UN hosts the following two pages that provide listings of major climate change reports:

· Major Reports (Dag Hammarskjöld Library)

· If you are looking for one single authoritative statement, the go-to resource lies with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC), the international body constituted in 1988 by the WMO and UNEP to assess the status of climate change science.

· Since 1990, thousands of scientists working under the IPCC framework have produced a major assessment of climate change

science every 5-7 years.

· The process has become so laborious that it now takes more than one year just to release the complete report.

· The latest IPCC report was finalized in 2023, and includes a 42-page Summary for Policymakers (SPM).

· The SPM represents the core commonly held understanding and assessment of climate change proferred by the

scientific community.

· Be warned that this document bears all the arid hallmarks of being "written by a committee"...which is to say that

each and every word & phrase in this document was carefully and deliberately parsed by scientists and government

officials...with the ultimate result of some infelicitious & opaque (albeit authoritative & reliable) language.

Two very useful and comprehensive climate change information resources are: