From Green Left: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/52933
By Simon Butler
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The World Bank delivered a brutal warning about the dangers of runaway climate change and called for rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a recent report. But don’t expect the bank to take its own advice.
The bank released its Turn Down the Heat report on climate change on November 18. Subtitled “Why a 4 degree warmer world must be avoided”, the report said the world is headed for a 4°C average temperature rise by the end of the century, and possibly as soon as 2060.
On today’s trends, a 4°C world is almost certain — even if all nations were to meet their current targets to cut emissions. That is, the existing pledges to cut emissions made at recent international climate talks are not enough to make a difference.
The report makes clear that a 4°C world would be a global calamity. The World Bank said a 4°C temperature rise would lead to average summer temperatures about 6°C higher in North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North America.
The higher temperatures will also mean “a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high temperature extremes”.
These extremes, such the unprecedented Russian heatwave of 2010, would become “the new normal summer”. The Russian heatwave caused more than 10,000 deaths and wiped close to $15 billion off the country’s GDP.
The big rise in CO2 levels would also cause a 150% rise in ocean acidification by 2100, something probably “unparalleled in Earth’s history”. This would spell the end for the world’s coral reefs but also wipe out global fish stocks, which the WWF says are due to collapse anyway by mid-century from overfishing. Today, about 1 billion people worldwide rely on fish as their main protein source.
Continue reading at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/52933
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