UN report on climate change

[Ahriman238]

It's a lot more urgent then everyone thought, and is outracing our predictions and models.

If the world doesn't cut pollution of heat-trapping gases, the already noticeable harms of global warming could spiral "out of control," the head of a United Nations scientific panel warned Monday.

And he's not alone. The Obama White House says it is taking this new report as a call for action, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying "the costs of inaction are catastrophic."

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that issued the 32-volume, 2,610-page report here early Monday, told The Associated Press: "It is a call for action." Without reductions in emissions, he said, impacts from warming "could get out of control."

One of the study's authors, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said, "If we don't reduce greenhouse gases soon, risks will get out of hand. And the risks have already risen."

Twenty-first century disasters such as killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and deadly flooding in Mozambique, Thailand and Pakistan highlight how vulnerable humanity is to extreme weather, according to the report from the Nobel Prize-winning group of scientists. The dangers are going to worsen as the climate changes even more, the report's authors said.

"We're now in an era where climate change isn't some kind of future hypothetical," said the overall lead author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California. "We live in an area where impacts from climate change are already widespread and consequential."

Nobody is immune, Pachauri and other scientists said.

"We're all sitting ducks," Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the main authors of the report, said in an interview.

After several days of late-night wrangling, more than 100 governments unanimously approved the scientist-written 49-page summary — which is aimed at world political leaders. The summary mentions the word "risk" an average of about 5 1/2 times per page.

"Changes are occurring rapidly and they are sort of building up that risk," Field said.

These risks are both big and small, according to the report. They are now and in the future. They hit farmers and big cities. Some places will have too much water, some not enough, including drinking water. Other risks mentioned in the report involve the price and availability of food, and to a lesser and more qualified extent some diseases, financial costs and even world peace.

"Things are worse than we had predicted" in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh. "We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated."

The problems have gotten so bad that the panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks. In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was "high" and colored blazing red. The latest report adds a new level, "very high," and colors it deep purple.

You might as well call it a "horrible" risk level, said van Aalst: "The horrible is something quite likely, and we won't be able to do anything about it."

The report predicts that the highest level of risk would first hit plants and animals, both on land and the acidifying oceans.

Climate change will worsen problems that society already has, such as poverty, sickness, violence and refugees, according to the report. And on the other end, it will act as a brake slowing down the benefits of a modernizing society, such as regular economic growth and more efficient crop production, it says.

"In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans," the report says.

And if society doesn't change, the future looks even worse, it says: "Increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts."

While the problems from global warming will hit everyone in some way, the magnitude of the harm won't be equal, coming down harder on people who can least afford it, the report says. It will increase the gaps between the rich and poor, healthy and sick, young and old, and men and women, van Aalst said.

But the report's authors say this is not a modern day version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Much of what they warn of are more nuanced troubles that grow by degrees and worsen other societal ills. The report also concedes that there are uncertainties in understanding and predicting future climate risks.

The report, the fifth on warming's impacts, includes risks to the ecosystems of the Earth, including a thawing Arctic, but it is far more oriented to what it means to people than past versions.

The report also notes that one major area of risk is that with increased warming, incredibly dramatic but ultra-rare single major climate events, sometimes called tipping points, become more possible with huge consequences for the globe. These are events like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would take more than 1,000 years.

"I can't think of a better word for what it means to society than the word 'risk,'" said Virginia Burkett of the U.S. Geological Survey, one of the study's main authors. She calls global warming "maybe one of the greatest known risks we face."

Global warming is triggered by heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, that stay in the atmosphere for a century. Much of the gases still in the air and trapping heat came from the United States and other industrial nations. China is now by far the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter, followed by the United States and India.

Unlike in past reports, where the scientists tried to limit examples of extremes to disasters that computer simulations can attribute partly to man-made warming, this version broadens what it looks at because it includes the larger issues of risk and vulnerability, van Aalst said.

Freaky storms like 2013's Typhoon Haiyan, 2012's Superstorm Sandy and 2008's ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change's ever rising seas, he said.

And in the cases of the big storms like Haiyan, Sandy and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the poor were the most vulnerable, Oppenheimer and van Aalst said. The report talks about climate change helping create new pockets of poverty and "hotspots of hunger" even in richer countries, increasing inequality between rich and poor.

Report co-author Maggie Opondo of the University of Nairobi said that especially in places like Africa, climate change and extreme events mean "people are going to become more vulnerable to sinking deeper into poverty." And other study authors talked about the fairness issue with climate change.

"Rich people benefit from using all these fossil fuels," University of Sussex economist Richard Tol said. "Poorer people lose out."

Huq said he had hope because richer nations and people are being hit more, and "when it hits the rich, then it's a problem" and people start acting on it.

Part of the report talks about what can be done: reducing carbon pollution and adapting to and preparing for changing climates with smarter development.

The report echoes an earlier U.N. climate science panel that said if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the world is looking at another about 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 or 4 degrees Celsius) of warming by 2100 instead of the international goal of not allowing temperatures to rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius). The difference between those two outcomes, Princeton's Oppenheimer said, "is the difference between driving on an icy road at 30 mph versus 90 mph. It's risky at 30, but deadly at 90."

Tol, who is in the minority of experts here, had his name removed from the summary because he found it "too alarmist," harping too much on risk.

But the panel vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, said that's not quite right: "We are pointing for reasons for alarm ... It's because the facts and the science and the data show that there are reasons to be alarmed. It's not because we're alarmist."

The report is based on more than 12,000 peer reviewed scientific studies. Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, a co-sponsor of the climate panel, said this report was "the most solid evidence you can get in any scientific discipline."

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who wasn't part of this report, said he found the report "very conservative" because it is based on only peer reviewed studies and has to be approved unanimously.

There is still time to adapt to some of the coming changes and reduce heat-trapping emissions, so it's not all bad, said study co-author Patricia Romero-Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

"We have a closing window of opportunity," she said. "We do have choices. We need to act now."

[Ahriman238]

Some real gems in the comments too:

"Climate Scientists" are on scientific a par with "Scientologists." Both are mystagogues of metaphysical anti-science religions.

The Earth's average temperature has been growing gradually cooler over the past 15 years while amount of CO2 gas in the air has gradually increased proving the dogmas of the "Climate Science" religion wrong.

Americans with knowledge of Scientific Method and especially the Laws of Thermodynamics are never going to join the religion of Climate Scientists no matter how vociferously and often the State media rebroadcast the myths of the Mystagogues.

And it is time for Action.

It's time time for a Federal judge to invoke the Supreme Court ruling Separation of Church and State and order an end to all government money, directives, and especially access to public schools for inculcating even more scientifically ignorant people into their religion.

The question I have for you is why is it changing so much faster than it has in the past?

Is it really changing that fast or is it because weather is being reported almost 24/7 now?
The funny thing about the science behind the global warming is that if you question anything about the response is that the science is settled and you are just a science doubter. However, few things in science are definitely settled.

I can speak on behalf of Gen-E (Entitlement Generation); we are really tired of hearing about this ultra played out Global Warming scam. Give it a break, you aren't going to convince us. Just go away. Caring about the environment was for the 80's and 90's generation.

What is it going to take to convince people that this is a real problem and needs to be addressed properly?

[Borgholio]

What is it going to take to convince people that this is a real problem and needs to be addressed properly?

A general increase in the severity of weather systems so that eventually you get 2 or 3 category 5 hurricanes hitting New York all within a week or two of each other.

But then again the same people who are denying climate change will just flip-flop and blame climate scientists for not doing enough to stop it. So either way they'll probably make assholes of themselves. Unless they all drown in one of those hurricanes... Nah, we'd never be that lucky.

[The Vortex Empire]

I wish humanity was capable of preventing problems instead of refusing to deal with them until it's already happening, but that seems unlikely.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I wish humanity was capable of preventing problems instead of refusing to deal with them until it's already happening, but that seems unlikely.

I'm inclined to be milder more optimistic than you. I mean, I know progress is slower than is ideal or even necessary, but a lot has changed for the best in the past decade or so. It is becoming a more important factor in people's daily lives, in the way people live, shop, eat, etc. Yes, there are people like those commenters up there, and yes there are still problems with pollution from automobiles and such (and deforestation in the Amazon, etc.). But all of those trends ARE trending in the right direction, albeit slowly. I think things are going to get better in this regard, though unfortunately it will be slow enough to cause same preventable disasters in the future. I just don't think we're doomed.

[Simon_Jester]

Does anyone know what the age distribution of climate change denial is? Is its popularity uniform, is it more widespread among 60-year-olds than 30-year-olds, or what?

[Borgholio]

Does anyone know what the age distribution of climate change denial is? Is its popularity uniform, is it more widespread among 60-year-olds than 30-year-olds, or what?

I would honestly expect it to be the same demographic that is against gay marriage, thinks that the trickle-down effect works on Wall street, thinks industry is more important than nature, and believes Obama is a Muslim Communist.

[Broomstick]

The rich will use their wealth to remain comfortable as long as possible, and the poor have no power to change the juggernaut. Climate change is going to happen, it IS happening, and at this point all the smart people can do is attempt to adapt.

[Lagmonster]

Don't give up so easily.

I cannot speak for my government, or my department, or any other, but as unofficially as possible I can say that I don't have a single peer or contact, whether in agri-policy, agronomy, pasture management, or other agricultural research or planning group, who doesn't take seriously the task of ensuring that food levels meet the worlds' demand. Part of that has, for at least a decade now, included planning for climate change. The battle really, really isn't over.

[Broomstick]

You're in Canada, which is one of the nations likely to be either least affected or even wind up a winner in some respects.

The policymakers in the US, the billionaires, the policy makers and movers and shakers largely either don't give a fuck or only care about extracting wealth for themselves. The Chinese are determined to keep building, consequences to the environment be damned. India is also trying to haul a billion people into the 21st Century and has limited ability to cope with the consequences. That's about 2.5 to 3 billion people right there who aren't making the effort to really change in a way to make things better. Even if we can get Europe on board with real and effective change that's just not enough to turn the tide, and most of the rest of the world, like Africa, just don't have the power to really have an effect.

I don't see it as surrender, I see it as acknowledging reality.

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely advocate reducing human impact on the climate (actually, on the environment in general) but I just don't see things halting, much less reversing. The only way we're going to see a real change in course is if something cataclysmic happens, and even then, it won't be a matter of going back to the way things were it will be adapting to what we have after.

I mean, if the US was at all serious about things like ensuring an adequate food supply for even its own people there wouldn't be talk about how to bring more water to California's Central Valley, there would be talk about dispersing food production to multiple locations instead of putting everything into one basket (or valley).

[Borgholio]

how to bring more water to California's Central Valley

Ain't happening this year, I can tell you that. Maybe not even the next.

[mr friendly guy]

You're in Canada, which is one of the nations likely to be either least affected or even wind up a winner in some respects.

The policymakers in the US, the billionaires, the policy makers and movers and shakers largely either don't give a fuck or only care about extracting wealth for themselves. The Chinese are determined to keep building, consequences to the environment be damned. India is also trying to haul a billion people into the 21st Century and has limited ability to cope with the consequences. That's about 2.5 to 3 billion people right there who aren't making the effort to really change in a way to make things better. Even if we can get Europe on board with real and effective change that's just not enough to turn the tide, and most of the rest of the world, like Africa, just don't have the power to really have an effect.

Er China has the largest wind power generation followed by the US and a few years ago was rated number one for renewable energy investment by Bloomberg. China also has one of the largest solar power producers in the world and once their nuclear power plants start rolling out they will have completed the largest roll out of nuclear power (even though environmental groups hate that, its ability to not emit greenhouse gases and provide immense energy at the same time can't be denied). They aren't climate change deniers like certain right wing groups in developed nations.

They do however argue (not unfairly I might add) that the industrialised nations polluted more than they have historically (even counting China's pollution up to the modern day when this argument was made) so these nations should be doing more than China.

[Broomstick]

Right. How does China's output of exhaust from coal-fired power plants rate compared to other nations?

Bravo to everyone promoting renewals, but even if you're the greatest at rolling out non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power sources, if all your other power sources greatly outnumber those and are still churning out climate change gasses it will, at best, slow the change down, not halt it and sure as hell not reserve it.

[madd0ct0r]

that's an easy question: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

CO2 emissions in tonnes/capita in 2009

China: 6.2
UK 7.9
Germany: 9.1
Canada: 14.6
USA 17.6

given I wouldn't say the standard of living is worse in the UK then the USA, sounds like you've got quite a lot of work to do

[Broomstick]

The US is actually towards MORE coal not less because we have coal and it means less dependence on foreign sources... not that I approve or disapprove, that's simply the rationale used by the decision makers.

[mr friendly guy]

Right. How does China's output of exhaust from coal-fired power plants rate compared to other nations?

Bravo to everyone promoting renewals, but even if you're the greatest at rolling out non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power sources, if all your other power sources greatly outnumber those and are still churning out climate change gasses it will, at best, slow the change down, not halt it and sure as hell not reserve it.

that's an easy question: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

CO2 emissions in tonnes/capita in 2009

China: 6.2
UK 7.9
Germany: 9.1
Canada: 14.6
USA 17.6

given I wouldn't say the standard of living is worse in the UK then the USA, sounds like you've got quite a lot of work to do

I think Hans Rosling's quote springs to mind. Saying China pollutes more than the US (because combine output is more even though per capita output is much less) is like saying Chinese people are fatter than Americans because their combined mass is greater.

The US is actually towards MORE coal not less because we have coal and it means less dependence on foreign sources... not that I approve or disapprove, that's simply the rationale used by the decision makers.

I thought the US is moving towards natural gas via fracking. Natural gas itself produces less carbon emissions than coal, but the catch is with the fracking process which releases methane into the atmosphere. The jury is still out as to whether we can do it in such a way that the methane released contributes less to warming than the amount of CO2 we save by burning natural gas. I certainly hope so because the big polluters all have large reserves of natural gas which has suddenly become economically viable to extract with fracking.

[Broomstick]

More natural gas, too, of course, but if I remember correctly coal use is up, too. There's no reason they both can't rise.

[Simon_Jester]

I think Hans Rosling's quote springs to mind. Saying China pollutes more than the US (because combine output is more even though per capita output is much less) is like saying Chinese people are fatter than Americans because their combined mass is greater.

The catch is that while US per capita carbon emissions have probably more or less plateaued, Chinese per capita emissions are going to be increasing rapidly for at least another few decades.

This doesn't mean China is morally blameworthy- it simply means that if China does notd commit to limiting carbon emissions as it finishes its industrialization, then world carbon emissions are almost certain to increase no matter what the US or Europe does.

They will increase faster, and make things worse, if the US and Europe act irresponsibly. But they will increase either way.

[ray245]

However, doesn't the country's potential ability to survive climate change also largely depends on its economic wealth? China seems to be more content with being a rich superpower in a fucked up world than a relatively poorer nation that stalls their economic progress to reduce their greenhouse emissions.

I'm not sure if there can be enough tangible incentives for industrialising nations like China and India to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases in the near future. Unless the developed world can guarantee and provide sufficient amount of aid to countries like China, why would China want to inevitably slow down their economic progress? As far as I can tell, economic progress and the building of more coal power plants ( not discounting the fact that China is making a strong effort to build more nuclear plants) is the same thing for the Chinese.

[Lagmonster]

The policymakers in the US, the billionaires, the policy makers and movers and shakers largely either don't give a fuck or only care about extracting wealth for themselves. The Chinese are determined to keep building, consequences to the environment be damned. India is also trying to haul a billion people into the 21st Century and has limited ability to cope with the consequences. That's about 2.5 to 3 billion people right there who aren't making the effort to really change in a way to make things better.

I'm not going to argue that you don't have problems or assholes, but writing off entire countries like that as irredeemably irresponsible is just silly. Anecdotally, we have several individuals working on exchange, or as immigrants, from both China and India. They understand the problem, their people understood it before they arrived, and they're taking ideas back home with them that everyone involved knows aren't simply 'the West trying to stymie our growth into a world power', but 'holy shit, we kind of have to stop fucking shit up out here'.

Even if we can get Europe on board with real and effective change that's just not enough to turn the tide, and most of the rest of the world, like Africa, just don't have the power to really have an effect.

As an interest point, it has been well-known for a few years now that thanks to modern strains of wheat and available low-cost farming methods, sub-Saharan Africa could produce enough wheat to feed its population comfortably without dependence on foreign imports. If they used their land properly. And...fixed their roads. That's a big one. But the potential is there and the efforts are there. Even if Bad Things Happen, we can still feed everyone.

[mr friendly guy]

The other thing to note is, that 1) richer country are going to adapt to climate change better than poorer countries, even if some governments think climate change is due to some natural variation or solar energy BS rather than due to greenhouse gases.

2) Rich countries are not going to help poorer countries that much no matter how idealistic some people claim to be. That is they won't be able to ameliorate the effects of climate change for poor countries.

Thus 3) the incentive is actually for industrialising nations to have a foot in each door as the saying goes. That is as well as promote renewables and nuclear, they have to ultimately become rich(er) to be able to offset the deleterious effects of climate change for their own population. To become richer and industrialise, inevitably will involve carbon emissions.

[Irbis]

Right. How does China's output of exhaust from coal-fired power plants rate compared to other nations?

China argues this graph is relevant:



As in, what matters according to them is not only width of the slice of emissions today, but also its total area. Meaning, countries responsible for largest slice of what humanity put into the air should reduce first and strongest, as they already ate most of the pie and should leave a bit for others. You might disagree with that, but they have a point the 'red' slice is small % of the 'blue' one so they should not be both blamed equally.

And yes, if you look objectively, it's funny how country that emits ~ EU and China combined usually points accusing finger at both when it also goes "fuck the rest of the world, only my economy counts" while both EU and China already have huge reduction programs in deployment without dragging their feet.

[Broomstick]

What that graph also illustrates is that there are a few big players whose effects outweigh those of entire groups of others. If everyone EXCEPT the US and China were able to go entirely to renewables we'd still have emission levels exceeding the global levels of the '80's and '90's which we know were high enough to affect the climate. If you can't get the biggest 3-4 players on board you only slow down the change, you don't stop it.

Likewise, even if one of the big players - say the US, why not be crazy optimistic - were to completely eliminate emissions you'd STILL only slow, not stop, the rate of change.

So, it's in no one's interest to act solely on their own. In fact, it really is a situation were literally everyone has to buy in to reducing emissions to even slow down the problem. That's why I just don't see it happening. This isn't getting 200 countries together every four years for two weeks for a track meet, this is something every nation will have to work on every single day, and it's going to cost everybody money.

I just don't see getting sufficient buy in.

Mind you, I don't everyone in any country has a "screw the world, I'll get mine" attitude. Heck, I grow a significant portion of my own food, bought the most fuel-efficient vehicles I could and try to use them efficiently, as light bulbs burn out and as we replace appliances we opt for the most fuel efficient options we can get, we have fewer electric gadgets running fewer hours a day than most, try to buy local, and so forth but even if I, as an individual, fervently believe in climate change and think Something Should Be Done as an individual my influence is sharply limited. I don't have a choice of how my local utility produces power, for example. Converting to solar would be problematic in this area (although our exterior lighting for the driveway and backyard has been exclusively solar for a couple years now) and even if we did, producing the panels brings its own environmental baggage. I can advocate all I want for change but around here I'm a distinct minority (although a growing minority now that the changes are becoming harder to ignore).

Until this reaches genuine disaster proportions you're not going to get sufficient buy in world-wide among all the groups that you need to buy in (not just the EU but also the US, China, etc.). At that point things will be extremely ugly. As noted, the wealthier nations will tend to take care of their own first and at a certain point they'll cut the poor loose and devil take the hindmost.

Sorry that sounds so doom and gloom - I'm actually quite optimistic civilization will survive and come out the other end of all this but I do expect there will be some mighty nasty decades to go through first, and I don't expect to live long enough to see the improvements in the end. Maybe that's why I'm so doom-and-gloom - I have no more than 70 more years to live on this Earth even if I tie the record for longest lived person ever, more likely a mere 50 (which seems so short now that I can count my own age as half a century) and possibly even less than that. When you're talking about a problem that is likely going to be around for a century or more, well, no, I probably won't live to see the end of it though some of you in your 20's might. Maybe. I certainly hope you do.

I'm not going to live to see the climate change back to what it was when I was a child or young adult. I don't have a choice, all I can do is find a way to adapt, there is no going back in my remaining lifetime.

Or Yellowstone blows up and not only does the planet chill down for awhile, we'll all have far, far worse problems to deal with. Assuming we're still alive (not at all certain for us North Americans). Personally, I'd rather deal with our current climate change that that.

[Crossroads Inc.]

If we are mentioning idiotic commentors who have NO grasp of how Science works...
Well...

So many people are bashing the OP for not being an expert or drinking the kool aid or whatever when they are doing the samething they're bashing about. Someone called out the use of this past winter being the coldest in a 102 years. Thats the same as saying "last year WORLD WIDE was the warmest in recorded History"....Man has been recording history at most for 10,000 years aproximately, the earth is 4b+ years old.

Maybe you meant recorded history as recorded by the planet. Which we've only really started to study in the last century give or take. The man stated his opinion that global warming as defined by Al Gore and his merry bunch, not that it doesn't exist at all. Instead of responding with something that resembles a coherent thought you go to the right vs left political debate.

Conspiracies and all BS aside if you believe these scientists then you should probably take a look at what other scientists think about global warming being man made. If co2 is such a bad pollutant, what are all living breathing organisms supposed to do, stop breathing? Considering that co2 levels are the lowest they've ever been in the last 600 million years, and combine that with the fact that co2 in the atmosphere today accounts for .038% of the total.

Theres so much information out there to read and form your own opinions instead of reciting verbatim something you heard in that movie that Al Gore recieved a nobel prize for. And Al knows what he's talking about because he "created the internet"!