Global
Warming Dials Up Risks, UN Report Says
By
Seith Borenstein – March 30, 2014 – AP – THE BIG STORY
YOKOHAMA,
Japan (AP) — 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."
My
comments: The greatest threat to mankind is their SIN against
God Almighty. Today, every nation is godless, like in the days of
Noah. We are at the End of the Age and mankind is about to accept
Satan's son as their "savior." The Whole World will
worship him and receive his "mark," thereby condemning
themselves to Eternal Death. Then God begins His Great Tribulation, now that is something to fear! Global
Warming is a Hoax, invented by Satan to distract mankind from the
real issue of this day, SIN, and to give the UN COMPLETE CONTROL over the nations! Satan needs COMPLETE CONTROL to reveal his son as the "savior" of the world.
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