The world's hot future
There is no escape from global warming.
That's the conclusion of a series of pessimistic new studies released Monday in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, where the world's top scientists determined that the threshold for catastrophic climate change is much lower than previously believed.
The Paris Agreement plan to limit the global temperature rise to 2 C — a modest goal that is still well out of reach — will not be enough to help the planet avoid the worst ravages of rising oceans and changing weather, the scientists concluded, provoking food shortages and mass migrations.
While atwo-degree limit would be better than Earth's current trajectory — at least a 3 C rise — the negative effectswould still be devastating, with a marked increase in destructive storms, extreme heat waves and long-term droughts.
Smoke and steam rise from the smokestack of a coal-fired power plant near Ordos in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Nov. 3, 2015. (Mark Schiefelbein.Associated Press) Among the new predictions for the 2 C scenario:
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A half-metre rise in oceans by 2100 and at least an additional half-metre by 2300, leading to widespread flooding in the "highly vulnerable" low-lying deltas and cities, where close to one billion people live.
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Increased food insecurity because of "significant changes"in regional temperatures and water cycles, with India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Oman and Saudi Arabia at the greatest risk.
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A13 per cent drop in GDP per person, on average, by 2100, as the world is forced to reckon with the spiralling costs of climate change.
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Pernicious droughts, especially in southern Africa and South America, where the water flow in the Amazon could decrease 25 per cent.
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Heightened losses of plant and animal biodiversity and shrinking supplies of fresh water.
As a result, the journal is calling for a downward revision of Paris target to a 1.5 C global rise — an increase that will still result in devastation, but just not as much.
Students walk in the yard of the Pantai Bahagia Elementary School before tide comes in Bekasi, Indonesia on March 7, 2018. Almost every day, the sea, which used to lap the shore a few kilometres away, floods their schoolyard and classrooms. (Darren Whiteside/Reuters) "The papers in this issue demonstrate that, on the balance of probability, limiting warming to 1.5 C, in the context of sustainable and equitable development, is still possible,"the journal's editors write.
"It remains to be seen whether the evidence provided on the impacts of climate change avoided by stabilizing at 1.5 C over higher temperature thresholds will be sufficient to motivate action on the scale and pace needed to achieve the 1.5 C goal."