Latest UN Climate Report An Exercise In Justified Worry

People are just beginning to digest the latest big fat report from UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released Monday, but the initial news reports on it paint a grim picture. 

Latest UN report on climate change, released this
past week, has a gloomy outlook. 

I mean, check out the lead paragraph of the Associated Press summary article on this thing:

"Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an 'unavoidable' increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says."

The AP article goes on:

'"The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,' says the major report designed to guide world leaders in their efforts to curb climate change. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming's impacts, it warns, 'will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.'"

Among the unhappy nuggets in the report:

Today's children who are still around in 2100 will see four times more climate extremes than they do today, even if the world's temperature goes up by another few tenths of a degree.  If temperatures go up by a little more then 3 degrees Fahrenheit by then, they would feel five times the number of disasters like floods, storms, heat waves and droughts. 

The report says that 3.3 billion people are already highly vulnerable to climate change and 15 times more likely to die in extreme weather. Large numbers of people are already being displaced by climate change. 

By 2050 - less than 30 years from now, about a billion people will face coastal flooding problems form rising seas, and many will be forced out of their homes from flooding, tropical cyclones and sea level rise. 

Some places could become uninhabitable, and others will become too hot for people to work outdoors. That's a problem if you're trying to grow crops, the AP notes. 

It's not just us humans that are having and will have a tough time with climate change. 

Vox outlines some major issues different species face with just a little more warming  

The IPCC says that 14 percent of all plants and animals on land would face a high risk of extinction.  If there's three degrees of warming, up to 29 percent of species on land could go extinct. 

Local populations of species are already decimated by climate change, even if the entire species isn't gone yet. 

Individual climate-related events can wipe out entire swaths, even majorities of some species. A subspecies of marsupial was essentially erased in a 2005 Australian heat wave. The enormous wildfires in the same nation decimated iconic Australian koala bears. 

The Pacific Northwest heat wave last June killed millions of ocean, lake and river aquatic animals. Just a little more warming could eliminate 90 percent of the world's already suffering coral reefs. 

The bottom line is the news in the latest report is bad, perhaps worse than most people would have believed.  As the New York Times reported:

"'One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we're seeing adverse impacts that are much more widespread and much more negative than expected,' said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin and one of the researchers who prepared the report."

 A lot of discussion regarding climate change is how we adapt to it. But the report indicates we need to step up the rate of adaptation. And if nothing is done to sharply reduce greenhouse emissions, things will have gone too far for any of us to adapt. 

The New York Times goes on: 

"'There has been the assumption that, 'Well, if we cannot control climate change, we'll just let it go and adapt to it,' said Hans-Otto Portner, a marine biologist in Germany who helped coordinate the report. But given the expected risks as the planet keeps warming, he said, 'this is certainly a very illusionary approach.'"

Here's the problem as I see it:  I know that most governments can walk and chew gum at the same time. But issues other than climate change facing the world are incredibly complex. The pandemic isn't over.  We have what really amounts to a global crisis with Russia's monstrous invasion of Ukraine. 

Sure, the fact that we're close to the point where climate change will limit humanity's ability to feed itself, climate change is the ultimate crisis. But you can't just blow off the other crises. 

Even if nations commit to aggressively combating climate change, which is a big if, do we have the bandwidth to actually get the job done? And done on time?

The IPCC estimates we'd have to eliminate almost all carbon emissions by 2050 to get a handle on things. That's only 28 years from now. Meanwhile, judging from the new record high for the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set last year, emissions continue to rise. 

It's not like the IPCC hasn't been giving us a head's up on all this for the past couple of decades at least. 

The AP again here:

"The panel of more than 200 scientists puts out a series of these massive reports every five to seven years, with this one, the second of the series, devoted to how climate change affects people and the planet. Last August the science panel published a report on the latest climate science and projections for future warming, branded 'code red' by the United Nations."

The AP quoted climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of the Nature Conservancy as calling this latest report as the "Your House is on Fire" report. 

However, she and others still advocated hope.  The AP article again: "It's really bad and there's a good chance that it will get worse,' Hayhoe said. 'But if we do everything we can, that will make a difference....That's what hope is."

"'Fear is not a good advisor and never is,' German vice chancellor and minister for climate and economy told the AP. 'Hope is the right one.'"