Climate report offers a grim forecast

What happened

A United Nations panel of the world’s leading environmental scientists issued its most dire warnings yet this week on the dangers posed by climate change, saying global warming is already affecting every continent and threatens to devastate food supplies, cause mass extinctions of plants and animals, worsen droughts, and raise the risk of wars over resources. The longer society holds off on cutting emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases, said the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greater the damage will be. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said panel Chairman Rajendra Pachauri. Scientists said that rising oceans and droughts could displace hundreds of millions of people by the end of the century, causing trillions of dollars of damage. Surging temperatures have already lowered corn and wheat yields, the report noted, and farmers could soon struggle to meet the world’s food demands.

The 2,500-page report was released at a critical time, as governments prepare to negotiate a new deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is scheduled to be finalized by the end of 2015. To have any major impact, the agreement would need the cooperation of the U.S.—which never ratified the 1997 Kyoto climate accord—and major energy users from the developing world, particularly China and India.

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What the editorials said

This alarming report should be a “call to action,” said the Los Angeles Times. There is now overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is radically altering our planet. The mountain snowpack in the western U.S. is shrinking, reducing the country’s water supply. “Heat waves are becoming more frequent and more intense.” If we care about the world we’re leaving our children, we will now take serious steps to cut carbon emissions.

But “man-made global warming is still a theory, not established science,” said the Washington Examiner. Yes, the average global temperature did rise through much of the last century. But from 1997 to 2012 the temperature remained static, even as Chinese power plants pumped out tons of supposedly planet-warming carbon dioxide. “The facts always seem to contradict the dire observations of global-warming alarmists.”

What the columnists said

Climate change is clearly real, said Matt Ridley in The Wall Street Journal, but the debate now is between the alarmists and the “lukewarmers,” who think its impact will be nowhere near as extreme as this report claims. New research suggests that our climate is less sensitive to carbon emissions than previously thought, which means the planet might warm by just 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century—less than half the rise predicted by the panel. Replacing fossil fuels with expensive solar and wind energy to combat this modest warming would be the economic equivalent of taking “chemotherapy for a cold.”

That “false optimism” is dangerous, said Phil Plait in Slate.com. By cutting our carbon emissions—phasing out dirty coal--burning power plants, and improving vehicle fuel efficiency—we can slow climate change’s worst effects, giving us time to “figure out what steps to take next.” But if we listen to the skeptics and do nothing, the results “will prove disastrous.” We will all have to make sacrifices to survive this crisis, said Simon Jenkins in TheGuardian.com. Environmentalists will have to drop their opposition to genetically modified crops designed to cope with droughts. Conservatives, meanwhile, will have to accept that the developing world will need billions more dollars in aid—unless they want to be inundated with climate refugees. “Nothing can be off-limits.”

Sadly, the world remains unwilling to act, said Philip Bump in TheAtlantic.com. Developing nations such as China and India are expected to build more than 1,000 coal-burning power plants in the next few years, to meet the electricity demands of their fast-growing economies. Western governments could pass policies that would reduce emissions, but won’t, out of fear of angering voters with higher energy bills. After all, “it’s always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened.”