To: rocksolid.shared.news
I've been wondering when the world will end and now I know. 2040. I was
hoping to live longer than that but oh well.

Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html

"Avoiding the most serious damage requires transforming the world economy
within just a few years,"

I knew I wasn't paying enough taxes! Damnit!

INCHEON, South Korea — A landmark report from the United Nations’
scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the
immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says
that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a
speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide
world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and
wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period
well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare,
an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate
Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a
few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world
leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight
global warming.

The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current
rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit
(1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating
coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had
focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a
larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that
was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe
effects of climate change.

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The new report, however, shows that many of those effects will come much
sooner, at the 2.7-degree mark.

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Avoiding the most serious damage requires transforming the world economy
within just a few years, said the authors, who estimate that the damage
would come at a cost of $54 trillion. But while they conclude that it is
technically possible to achieve the rapid changes required to avoid 2.7
degrees of warming, they concede that it may be politically unlikely.

[How much hotter is your hometown today than when you were born? Find out
here.]

For instance, the report says that heavy taxes or prices on carbon dioxide
emissions — perhaps as high as $27,000 per ton by 2100 — would be
required. But such a move would be almost politically impossible in the
United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse
gas emitter behind China. Lawmakers around the world, including in China,
the European Union and California, have enacted carbon pricing programs.

Image
People on a smog-clouded street in Hebei Province, China, in 2016. China
is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, followed by the United
States.CreditDamir Sagolj/Reuters
President Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate
change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to
withdraw from the Paris agreement. And on Sunday in Brazil, the world’s
seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gas, voters appeared on track to
elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he also plans to
withdraw from the accord.

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The report was written and edited by 91 scientists from 40 countries who
analyzed more than 6,000 scientific studies. The Paris agreement set out
to prevent warming of more than 3.6 degrees above preindustrial levels —
long considered a threshold for the most severe social and economic damage
from climate change. But the heads of small island nations, fearful of
rising sea levels, had also asked scientists to examine the effects of 2.7
degrees of warming.

[What on Earth is going on? Sign up to get our latest stories about
climate change.]

Absent aggressive action, many effects once expected only several decades
in the future will arrive by 2040, and at the lower temperature, the
report shows. “It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and
turn the world economy on a dime,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford
University climate scientist and an author of the report.

To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, the report said, greenhouse pollution
must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and 100 percent by
2050. It also found that, by 2050, use of coal as an electricity source
would have to drop from nearly 40 percent today to between 1 and 7
percent. Renewable energy such as wind and solar, which make up about 20
percent of the electricity mix today, would have to increase to as much as
67 percent.

“This report makes it clear: There is no way to mitigate climate change
without getting rid of coal,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at
Duke University and an author of the report.

The World Coal Association disputed the conclusion that stopping global
warming calls for an end of coal use. In a statement, Katie Warrick, its
interim chief executive, noted that forecasts from the International
Energy Agency, a global analysis organization, “continue to see a role
for coal for the foreseeable future.”

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Ms. Warrick said her organization intends to campaign for governments to
invest in carbon capture technology. Such technology, which is currently
too expensive for commercial use, could allow coal to continue to be
widely used.

Despite the controversial policy implications, the United States
delegation joined more than 180 countries on Saturday in accepting the
report’s summary for policymakers, while walking a delicate diplomatic
line. A State Department statement said that “acceptance of this report
by the panel does not imply endorsement by the United States of the
specific findings or underlying contents of the report.”

The State Department delegation faced a conundrum. Refusing to approve the
document would place the United States at odds with many nations and show
it rejecting established academic science on the world stage. However, the
delegation also represents a president who has rejected climate science
and climate policy.

“We reiterate that the United States intends to withdraw from the Paris
agreement at the earliest opportunity absent the identification of terms
that are better for the American people,” the statement said.

The report attempts to put a price tag on the effects of climate change.
The estimated $54 trillion in damage from 2.7 degrees of warming would
grow to $69 trillion if the world continues to warm by 3.6 degrees and
beyond, the report found, although it does not specify the length of time
represented by those costs.

The report concludes that the world is already more than halfway to the
2.7-degree mark. Human activities have caused warming of about 1.8 degrees
since about the 1850s, the beginning of large-scale industrial coal
burning, the report found.

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The United States is not alone in failing to reduce emissions enough to
prevent the worst effects of climate change. The report concluded that the
greenhouse gas reduction pledges put forth under the Paris agreement will
not be enough to avoid 3.6 degrees of warming.

The report emphasizes the potential role of a tax on carbon dioxide
emissions. “A price on carbon is central to prompt mitigation,” the
report concludes. It estimates that to be effective, such a price would
have to range from $135 to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution in
2030, and from $690 to $27,000 per ton by 2100.

By comparison, under the Obama administration, government economists
estimated that an appropriate price on carbon would be in the range of $50
per ton. Under the Trump administration, that figure was lowered to about
$7 per ton.

Image

The World Coal Association disputed the conclusion that stopping global
warming calls for an end of coal use. CreditKevin Frayer/Getty Images
Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group funded by the
libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch, has made a point of
campaigning against politicians who support a carbon tax.

“Carbon taxes are political poison because they increase gas prices and
electric rates,” said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded Washington research
organization, and who led the Trump administration’s transition at the
Environmental Protection Agency.