Newsflash: A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided - World Bank

Regular readers of Skeptical Science will be well aware of the growing signs of destabilisation in the global climate. Coming hard on the heels of a plethora of other warnings, the World Bank have now released a must-read report, dated November 18th 2012.  It runs to 106 pages, which we'll read and digest before a more detailed analysis is posted (soon!): in the meanwhile, here is an excerpt from the above link.


Key Points:

Turn Down The Heat - World Bank on Climate Change

November 18, 2012 – Like summer’s satellite image of the melting Greenland ice sheet, a new report suggests time may be running out to temper the rising risks of climate change.

"Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided," (pdf) warns we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.

Moreover, adverse effects of a warming climate are “tilted against many of the world's poorest regions” and likely to undermine development efforts and global development goals, says the study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, on behalf of the World Bank. The report, urges "further mitigation action as the best insurance against an uncertain future."

"A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided – we need to hold warming below 2°C," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. "Lack of action on climate change threatens to make the world our children inherit a completely different world than we are living in today. Climate change is one of the single biggest challenges facing development, and we need to assume the moral responsibility to take action on behalf of future generations, especially the poorest."

The report, reviewed by some of the world’s top scientists, is being released ahead of the next comprehensive studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013/14, and follows the Bank’s own Strategic Framework for Development and Climate Change in 2008 and the World Development Report on climate change in 2010. "Turn Down the Heat" combines a synthesis of recent scientific literature with new analysis of likely impacts and risks, focusing on developing countries. It chronicles already observed climate change and impacts, such as heat waves and other extreme events, and offers projections for the 21st century for droughts, heat waves, sea level rise, food, water, ecosystems and human health.

The report says today’s climate could warm from the current global mean temperature of 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels, to as high as 4°C by 2100, even if countries fulfill current emissions-reduction pledges.


Click HERE to access the report. Will this be the wake-up call that Mankind so clearly needs? Will people realise that one of the biggest direct threats related to climate change is future food security? And that agricultural problems can mean a severe increase in basic food prices - already on the up? The opposition to mainstream science like to bang on about taxes, but a major hike in food costs will be as a universal tax that nobody, even with the most creative accountant, will be able to avoid. Will Mankind wake up before it is too late? Only time will tell...

Posted by John Mason on Wednesday, 21 November, 2012


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