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IPCC's "Darkest Yet" Climate Report Warns of Food, Water Shortages

The Australian reports that "UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by floods, drought, conflict and economic damage if carbon emissions go untamed. A draft of their report, seen by the news organisation AFP, is part of a massive overview by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, likely to shape policies and climate talks for years to come. Scientists and government representatives will meet in Yokohama, Japan, from tomorrow to hammer out a 29-page summary. It will be unveiled with the full report on March 31. 'We have a lot clearer picture of impacts and their consequences ... including the implications for security,' said Chris Field of the US’s Carnegie Institution, who headed the probe.

The work comes six months after the first volume in the long-awaited Fifth Assessment Report declared scientists were more certain than ever that humans caused global warming. It predicted global temperatures would rise 0.3C-4.8C this century, adding to roughly 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. Seas will creep up by 26cm-82cm by 2100. The draft warns costs will spiral with each additional degree, although it is hard to forecast by how much."

2 of 703 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We've gone beyond bad science by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At this point, the IPCC is looking more like bad disaster fiction.

    What problem do you have with the data?

    The problem a lot of people have understanding AGW is separating the science that is settled from the unsettled predictions. There is widespread consensus that CO2 warms the atmosphere, and that anthropogenic CO2 has warmed it to some degree.

    At the same time, there is a lot of science that is mere hypothesis. Very few scientists think the runaway Venus effect is realistic, for example.

    The approach of the IPCC is to take the worst scenario that hasn't been conclusively rejected by the scientific community, and promoting that scenario most prominently, which is why we you see it being presented with judgement words, like "darkest yet." Their goal seems to be to make it look as dark, which is obviously not a good scientific approach.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  2. Re:sugar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    because large chunks of land are currently frozen. Canada and Russia(the two largest countries) have tons of land but only a small percentage of those lands are farmable.

    I keep reading people saying this, but it doesn't work that way. I can’t speak to Russia, but of the “tons of land” in northern Canada, the vast majority of it is either Laurentian Shield or frozen muskeg.

    If the climate over the Laurentian Shield warms enough to grow agriculture crops, we will be able to grow ... as close to nothing as makes no difference. The Shield was scraped bare during the last glacial maximum. The vast majority of the Laurentian Shield has soil only one or two inches deep, below which is the bedrock of the Shield.

    If the climate warms enough to thaw the muskeg, we will be able to grow ... as close to nothing as makes no difference. Muskeg is peat bog. It is next to useless for agriculture.

    Even worse, when the muskeg thaws it will give off CO2, potentially vast quantities of it, resulting in a potentially huge positive feedback loop, accelerating climate warming.