We Must Manage Global Warming Risks by Cutting Carbon Pollution, Top Scientists Conclude

Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest Synthesis Report, summarizing the scientific research on the causes and impacts of global warming, and how we can mitigate its consequences.  The report included various graphs showing how we’re changing the Earth’s climate, and concluded that humans are causing rapid and dangerous global warming.

Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.  Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.  The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.

Much of the report focused on the risks associated with these rapid climate changes.  Fundamentally, climate change is a risk management problem.  Even if you’re sceptical of the vast body of scientific research pointing to dangerous and potentially catastrophic climate change, there’s a very good chance the experts and their supporting evidence are correct and your scepticism is misplaced.  The IPCC report put those risks into perspective,

Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.  Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.

Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped.  The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases.

The key word here is “irreversible,” and it’s used 14 times in the IPCC’s latest Summary for Policymakers.  For example, if ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica collapse into the ocean, as they’ve already begun to, we can’t take the ice out of the ocean and put it back on land.  That lost ice and the sea level rise it causes are irreversible impacts.

Conversely, policies to slow global warming are reversible.  A new study by scientists at Duke University found that the widespread rejection of climate science by American political conservatives is in large part due to their distaste for the proposed solutions. Climate contrarians are afraid that climate policies will slow economic growth, despite evidence to the contrary.

However, if it turns out that the sceptics are right in their optimism that the best case climate scenario will occur, and if we go too far in our efforts to reduce carbon pollution, we can easily scale those efforts back.  We can’t reanimate extinct species, but we can adjust climate policies as needed.

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