Climate scenarios 'being realised'

Reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7940532.stm

By Matt McGrath BBC environment reporter, Copenhagen

The Arctic sea-ice has seen a rapid decline in recent summers

The worst-case scenarios on climate change envisaged by the UN two years ago are already being realised, say scientists at an international meeting.

In a statement in Copenhagen on their six key messages to political leaders, they say there is a increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climate shifts.

Even modest temperature rises will affect millions of people, particularly in the developing world, they warn.

But, they say,

most tools needed to cut carbon dioxide emissions already exist.

More than 2,500 researchers and economists attended this meeting designed to update the world on the state of climate research ahead of key political negotiations set for December this year.

New data was presented in Copenhagen on sea level rise, which indicated that the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made two years ago were woefully out of date.

Business as usual is dead - green growth is the answer to both our climate and economic problems. Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Scientists heard that waters could rise by over a metre across the world with huge impacts for hundreds of millions of people.

There was also new information on how the Amazon rainforest would cope with rising temperatures.

A UK Meteorological Office study concluded there would be a 75% loss of tree cover if the world warmed by three degrees for a century.

The scientists hope that their conclusions will remove any excuses from the political process.

Dr Katherine Richardson, who chaired the scientific steering committee that organised the conference, said the research presented added new certainty to the IPCC reports.

"We've seen lots more data, we can see where we are, no new surprises, we have a problem."

"Mass migrations"

The meeting was also addressed by Lord Stern, the economist, whose landmark review of the economics of climate change published in 2006 highlighted the severe cost to the world of doing nothing.

He now says the report underestimated the scale of the risks, and the speed at which the planet is warming.

He urged scientists to speak out and tell the politicians what the world would be like if effective measures against global warming were not taken.

He said that if the world was to warm by 5C over the next century, there would be dramatic consequences for millions of people. Rising seas would make many areas uninhabitable leading to mass migrations and inevitably sparking violent conflict.

Lord Stern: 'The Economics of Climate Change' underestimated the risks

"You'd see hundreds of millions people, probably billions of people who would have to move and we know that would cause conflict, so we would see a very extended period of conflict around the world, decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move, " said Lord Stern.

"So I think it's very important that we understand the magnitude of the risk we are running."

He said that a new, effective global deal was desperately needed to avoid these dramatic scenarios - and the current global economic slowdown was in some ways a help.

"Action is rather attractive, inaction is inexcusable. It's an opportunity, given that resources will be cheaper now than in the future, now is the time to get the unemployed of Europe working on energy efficiency."

Lord Stern's views were echoed by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

"Business as usual is dead - green growth is the answer to both our climate and economic problems.

"I hope the whole world will join us and set a two degree goal as an ambition of a climate deal in Copenhagen," said Mr Rasmussen.

Cost of tackling global climate change has doubled, warns Stern

Reposted from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/26/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange

· Author of landmark report says 2% of GDP is needed
· Inaction would mean far greater economic damage

• Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour
• The Guardian, Thursday 26 June 2008

Lord Stern believes £28bn may be need to tackle climate change. Photograph: PA

The author of an influential British government report arguing the world needed to spend just 1% of its wealth tackling climate change has warned that the cost of averting disaster has now doubled.

Lord Stern of Brentford made headlines in 2006 with a report that said countries needed to spend 1% of their GDP to stop greenhouse gases rising to dangerous levels. Failure to do this would lead to damage costing much more, the report warned - at least 5% and perhaps more than 20% of global GDP.

But speaking yesterday in London,

Stern said evidence that climate change was happening faster than had been previously thought meant that emissions needed to be reduced even more sharply.

This meant the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 500 parts per million, said Stern. In 2006, he set a figure of 450-550ppm. "I now think the appropriate thing would be in the middle of that range," he said. "To get below 500ppm ... would cost around 2% of GDP."

In a recent report for the London School of Economics,

Stern acknowledged that even 1% of GDP was "not a trivial amount". For the UK it is equivalent to £14bn a year. But he argue that it was a fraction of annual economic growth, and much less than the 8-14% that was spent, for example, on health by industrialised countries.

His reassessment of the cost of battling climate change comes at a sensitive time, the day before Gordon Brown makes a major speech setting out a £100bn strategy for ensuring that 15% of all energy used in the UK will come from renewable sources by 2020. The government has come under pressure from the Tories, whose statements on the environment include effectively banning new coal power stations and opposing a third runway at Heathrow.

Speaking yesterday at the launch of the Carbon Rating Agency, the world's first ratings agency for carbon offsetting projects, Stern warned that the 2% estimate required governments to act quickly. "All this depends on good policy and well functioning [carbon] markets. There are many ways to mess this up, many ways of acting to make it more costly," he said.

The Stern review in October 2006 called for global emissions to be cut by a quarter by 2050 and to be stopped from rising above the equivalent of 550ppm of CO2, a measure that combines the effect of all the greenhouse gases. The current level is 430ppm, and is rising by 2ppm a year.

Yesterday, Stern, a former World Bank chief economist and head of the UK government economic service, said

he now believed the limit should be 500ppm. This would reduce the risk from a 50% chance to a 3% chance that the global average temperature would rise by 5C above pre-industrial levels,

he said, pointing out that the last time this happened, 35-55m years ago, alligators lived near the north pole. "These kind of temperature changes transform the word," he said.

His new comments follow a speech in April in which he said that the latest research showed climate change was more of a threat, and called for global emissions to halve by 2050, including cuts of 80% in the UK and 90% in the US.

The Department for Environment said the case for cutting global emissions was still strong: "We cannot afford inaction on climate change. Even at the upper range of the estimates, the cost of avoiding dangerous climate change is much lower than even the most conservative estimates of inaction."

The Confederation of British Industry said Stern's latest figures should add to pressure for government and businesses to act quickly to avoid the costs rising further.

"This only reaffirms the need to tackle climate change as an immediate priority and highlights both the benefits of early action and the cost of inaction," said Neil Bentley, CBI Director of Business Environment.

Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

The Stern Report (Nicholas Stern, Wikipedia & Stern Review, Wikipedia)

Its main conclusions are that one percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) per annum is required to be invested in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and that failure to do so could risk global GDP being up to twenty percent lower than it otherwise might be. Stern’s report suggests that climate change threatens to be the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, and it provides prescriptions including environmental taxes to minimize the economic and social disruptions. He states, "our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century."

In June 2008 Stern increased the estimate to 2% of GDP to account for faster than expected climate change.

Download Stern Report from HM Treasury.

In this post I have reviewed the key points I've taken from the Executive Summary (4 page short pdf).

A longer 22 page Executive Summary pdf has diagrams.

• There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we take strong action now.
• the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.
• if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.
• The investment that takes place in the next 10-20 years will have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next. Our actions now and over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes. (I understand by this that if we dont take action then these will be the consequences)
  
• So prompt and strong action is clearly warranted. Because climate change is a global problem, the response to it must be international.
• Climate change could have very serious impacts on growth and development.
• If no action is taken to reduce emissions, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could reach double its pre-industrial level as early as 2035, virtually committing us to a global average temperature rise of over 2°C.
• In the longer term, there would be more than a 50% chance that the temperature rise would exceed 5°C. This rise would be very dangerous indeed; it is equivalent to the change in average temperatures from the last ice age to today. Such a radical change in the physical geography of the world must lead to major changes in the human geography – where people live and how they live their lives.
• All countries will be affected. The most vulnerable – the poorest countries and populations – will suffer earliest and most, even though they have contributed least to the causes of climate change. The costs of extreme weather, including floods, droughts and storms, are already rising, including for rich countries.
• Adaptation to climate change – that is, taking steps to build resilience and minimise costs – is essential. It is no longer possible to prevent the climate change that will take place over the next two to three decades, but it is still possible to protect our societies and economies from its impacts to some extent – for example, by providing better information, improved planning and more climate-resilient crops and infrastructure. Adaptation will cost tens of billions of dollars a year in developing countries alone, and will put still further pressure on already scarce resources. Adaptation efforts, particularly in developing countries, should be accelerated.
• The costs of stabilising the climate are significant but manageable; delay would be dangerous and much more costly.
• The risks of the worst impacts of climate change can be substantially reduced if greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere can be stabilised between 450 and 550ppm CO2 equivalent (CO2e). The current level is 430ppm CO2e today, and it is rising at more than 2ppm each year. Stabilisation in this range would require emissions to be at least 25% below current levels by 2050, and perhaps much more.
• Ultimately, stabilisation – at whatever level – requires that annual emissions be brought down to more than 80% below current levels.
• This is a major challenge, but sustained long-term action can achieve it at costs that are low in comparison to the risks of inaction. Central estimates of the annual costs of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550ppm CO2e are around 1% of global GDP, if we start to take strong action now.
• It would already be very difficult and costly to aim to stabilise at 450ppm CO2e. If we delay, the opportunity to stabilise at 500-550ppm CO2e may slip away.
• Action on climate change is required across all countries, and it need not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries.
• The costs of taking action are not evenly distributed across sectors or around the world. Even if the rich world takes on responsibility for absolute cuts in emissions of 60-80% by 2050, developing countries must take significant action too. But developing countries should not be required to bear the full costs of this action alone, and they will not have to. Carbon markets in rich countries are already beginning to deliver flows of finance to support low-carbon development, including through the Clean Development Mechanism.
• The world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development. Changes in energy technologies and in the structure of economies have created opportunities to decouple growth from greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth.
• Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries.
• A range of options exists to cut emissions; strong, deliberate policy action is required to motivate their take-up.
• Emissions can be cut through increased energy efficiency, changes in demand, and through adoption of clean power, heat and transport technologies. The power sector around the world would need to be at least 60% decarbonised by 2050 for atmospheric concentrations to stabilise at or below 550ppm CO2e, and deep emissions cuts will also be required in the transport sector.
• Even with very strong expansion of the use of renewable energy and other low carbon energy sources, fossil fuels could still make up over half of global energy supply in 2050. Coal will continue to be important in the energy mix around the world, including in fast-growing economies. Extensive carbon capture and storage will be necessary to allow the continued use of fossil fuels without damage to the atmosphere.
• Key elements of future international frameworks should include:
• Emissions trading: Expanding and linking the growing number of emissions trading schemes around the world is a powerful way to promote cost-effective reductions in emissions and to bring forward action in developing countries: strong targets in rich countries could drive flows amounting to tens of billions of dollars each year to support the transition to low-carbon development paths.
• Technology cooperation: Informal co-ordination as well as formal agreements can boost the effectiveness of investments in innovation around the world.
• Action to reduce deforestation: The loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global emissions each year than the transport sector. Curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way to reduce emissions; largescale international pilot programmes to explore the best ways to do this could get underway very quickly.
• Adaptation: The poorest countries are most vulnerable to climate change. It is essential that climate change be fully integrated into development policy, and that rich countries honour their pledges to increase support through overseas development assistance.

Global impact on society - UK Government

source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/fightingpoverty/climate_key.asp

Climate and environment - Ensuring the environment is managed in a way that helps to reduce poverty.

The document from the UK Department for International Development takes a global view of the impact of climate change on communities around the world. It cites 2 sources of information: the Stern Report and UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

The DfID document says...

• Sea levels are rising at a rapid rate (having risen by 20cm over the 20th century); in Asia, the homes of 94 million people could be flooded by the end of the century, leading to large-scale migration.

• The area of the world stricken by drought has doubled between 1970 and the early 2000s. In Africa fertile land is already turning to desert. By 2020, climate change is predicted to reduce some African farming harvests by 50%

• Storm surges in coastal areas are a threat to the economies of low-lying countries like Egypt and Thailand, where many factories and offices are less than a metre above sea-level.

• Natural disasters can set back a country’s economy by years. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch hit more than 25% of households in Honduras and led to a 7% drop in agricultural output. The number of people living in poverty in Honduras is now growing.

• Climate change brings the risk of increases in serious diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and polio. Longer rainy seasons have already led to increased malaria in parts of Rwanda and Tanzania.

• Temperatures in 2100 could be 1.4 to 5.8° higher than in 1990 if emissions aren’t curbed now.

• A temperature rise of 2 to 3.5° in India would reduce farmers’ incomes by between 9 and 25%.

• By 2025 two-thirds of the earth’s population will suffer water shortages.

• The costs of ignoring climate change have been estimated at more than that of the two world wars and the Great Depression (5 to 20% of GDP) (Stern Report).

• The cost of tackling the problem, however, could be around 1% of global GDP if mitigation policies are well-designed (Stern Report). Recent figures from the UNFCCC put the costs of adaptation for developing countries at between $28 to $67 billion in 2030.