IPCC
People must act fast to avoid world-wide climate catastrophe, but we still have time to make a difference, according to a new report released this week by a panel of 18 scientists working for the United Nations Foundation.
The report — “Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable” — argues that policy makers must marshal modern technology and get people to reduce emissions before temperature rise accelerates even more.
“To avoid a entering a regime of sharply rising danger of intolerable impacts on humans, policy makers should limit temperature increases from global warming to 2-2.5 ° C (3.5 to 4.5 °F)above the 1750 pre-industrial level. It is still possible to avoid unmanageable changes in the future, but the time for action is now.”
The cost of stabilizing the climate over the next few decades might be as much as $350 billion, estimated by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published online Feb. 12 by the treasury department of the United Kingdom. If that sounds like an immense amount, consider this: it would only be about 1 percent of the Global economic output and almost certainly cost far less than fighting one disaster after another later on.
“The costs of inaction would be likely to be much more significant in terms of damage to the world economy,” argues a FAQ on the report.
“No one can predict the consequences of climate change with complete certainty; but
we now know enough to understand the risks,” adds the Stern report executive summary. “Mitigation – taking strong action to reduce emissions – must be viewed as an investment, a cost incurred now and in the coming few decades to avoid the risks of very severe consequences in the future.”
The average global temperature has already climbed about 1.5 ° since the 1700s — most of that since the beginning of the 20th century. But projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say it could soar up to eight times higher by 2100.
National Climate Data Center
That future, if it happens, won’t be fun, the IPCC argues. It could mean no summer sea ice and endangered marine mammals, slushy permafrost that topples trees and buckles roads, fast-rising sea levels that inundate coastal cities, searing droughts in the U.S. wheat belt, boreal forest fires and insect outbreaks, unpredictable shifts in ocean fisheries.
To escape this outcome, people must move fast to reduce methane and black soot emissions worldwide, the report argues. “And global carbon dioxide emissions must level off by 2015 or 2020 at not much above their current amount, before beginning a decline to no more than a third of that level by 2100.”
Quotes from the press release:
“The world is experiencing climate disruption now and the increases in droughts, floods, and sea level rise that will occur in the coming decades will cause enormous human suffering and economic losses,” said Rosina Bierbaum, former Acting Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “The poorest are likely the most vulnerable. We imperil our children’s and grandchildren’s future if we fail to improve society’s capacity to adapt to a changing climate,”
“Our recommendations are designed to help the international community get on a path to stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and managing the impacts of climate change,” said Peter H. Raven, Past President of Sigma Xi, Presidential Medal of Science recipient and preeminent biodiversity expert. “Unlike many reports from scientists, this report gives very clear recommendations for what the international community and nations themselves must do to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
Other recommendations:
- Governments must enact taxes, fees and standards to force cars to use less fuel and burn cleaner, plus encourage people to buy vehicles that run on alternative fuels.
- Improve energy efficiency of buildings and homes.
- Jump start the use of biofuels.
- Build only coal plants capable of capturing and sequestering their carbon.
- Learn to adapt to the changes and problems that can’t be undone, like expecting sea level rise and periodic onslaughts of refugees trying to escape storms, drought, flood and famine.
In a news story about the report, USAToday posted disturbing graphic that allows you to click on changes in temps, heatwaves, precipitation and drought. It doesn’t show Alaska or the Arctic, however.