Warming can lead to economic losses
Print Edition
Global warming poses a mounting threat to health, economic growth, crops and water supplies, according to a draft report by top scientists that puts unprecedented emphasis on the risks of a changing climate.
A leaked 29-page draft by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, about the impacts of rising temperatures and due for release in March 2014, mentions “risk” 139 times against just 41 in its last assessment in 2007.
The increased stress on risk may make the case for cutting greenhouse gas emissions clearer both to policy-makers and the public by making it sound like an insurance policy for the planet, analysts say.
Many governments, meeting in Warsaw from November 11-22 for UN talks on climate change, have long pleaded for greater scientific certainty before making billion-dollar investments.
But certainty is elusive in climate science, as it is in predicting anything from the weather to Wall Street.
“The IPCC has transitioned to what I consider to be a full and rich recognition that the climate change problem is about managing risk,” Christopher Field, co-chair of the IPCC group preparing the report, said.
The report, posted on a climate sceptical website “nofrakkingconsensus” on November 1, resembles a previous draft that warns that parts of society and nature are more vulnerable to climate change.
Field also said there was more certainty about many aspects of climate change than in 2007.
It says, for instance, that a rise of temperatures of more than 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times could lead to economic losses of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent of global income.
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