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:

· For more in-depth treatments, see:

· this UN-sponsored listing of major reports on climate change

· 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). This document represents the

core commonly held understanding and assessment of climate change proferred by the scientific community. Be warned, however, 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....