GENEVA, SWITZERLAND –- The recently released Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that the major cause of environmental destruction worldwide is the printing of unread copies of The Daily Tar Heel.

“We thought other variables would be important,” said Jiminee Dex, IPCC Secretariat, “but it turned out that climate change, deforestation, and all other forms of planetary degradation can be traced almost exclusively to the unconscionable abundance of UNC’s student newspaper.”

Alfred Ovenkick, a UNC Professor of Environmental Science who has studied the DTH, says that the paper has been one of the world’s most ecologically destructive forces for years. “Vast swaths of pristine old growth forest have been gutted to fuel [The Daily Tar Heel’s] coverage of campus events,” he said.

“Their ink mixture has contained extract of the endangered North Carolina bullfrog since the turn of the century.”

The authors of the IPCC study were surprised to discover that the DTH’s effects on the environment are even graver than previously imagined. “We have documented the formation of a planetary ‘DTH layer’ that is pushing average global temperatures up at a rate of 2 degrees Celsius per year,” said chief author Salazar Costado.

“We can’t keep ignoring the DTH’s role in environmental degradation,” he said.

But climate scientists say that solutions will not come easily. In order to guide CO₂ emission to pre-DTH levels, the IPCC study recommends cutting DTH circulation to 20% of current levels, a recourse that its authors described as  “extremely unlikely”.

Around campus, reactions to the report have been heated. “The DTH’s reckless printing techniques have single-handedly destroyed our forests, our air, and our habitats” said local Greenpeace volunteer Crispin Pleasants. “We have to organize against the newspaper that is killing our world.”

The DTH could not be reached for comment.