Climate Forecast: World Is “Sleepwalking into Catastrophe”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-forecast-world-is-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/

By Anne C. Mulkern, E&E News on January 17, 2019

Climate change is the biggest threat to the planet, the World Economic Forum said yesterday in a sweeping catalog of global risks.

The institution’s annual analysis of economic dangers worldwide named extreme weather, natural disasters, man-made environmental disasters, biodiversity loss and failure to adapt to climate change as the chief perils to society.

Of all the risks to the globe, “it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe,” the WEF said in its Global Risks Report. “The results of climate inaction are becoming increasingly clear.”

The report noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s October analysis that “bluntly said ... we have at most 12 years to make the drastic and unprecedented changes needed to prevent average global temperatures from rising” 1.5 degrees Celsius, roughly 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Limiting global temperature increase to that amount is the goal of the international Paris Agreement.

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The Trump administration’s Fourth National Climate Assessment in November, meanwhile, said that “without significant reductions in emissions,” average global temperatures could rise 9 F by the turn of the century.

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Climate change as well is increasing strain on the global food system through changes in temperature, precipitation and extreme weather events, along with higher carbon emissions. The last four years have been the hottest on record, it said.

Sea-level rise is another peril. An estimated 800 million people in more than 570 coastal cities are vulnerable to oceans rising 1.6 feet by 2050.

Higher waters are already hitting home in the United States, the report said. Cities like Norfolk, Va.; Baltimore; Charleston, S.C.; and Miami experience flooding on sunny days due to rising sea levels. Rising water threatens roads, railways, ports, sanitation systems, tourism, agriculture, power plants and underground cables that connect the internet.

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