Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, U.S. Global Chance Research Program
“In the absence of significant global mitigation action and regional adaptation efforts, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, labor productivity, and the vitality of our communities. Regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures are projected to reduce the efficiency of power generation while increasing energy demands, resulting in higher electricity costs. The impacts of climate change beyond our borders are expected to increasingly affect our trade and economy, including import and export prices and U.S. businesses with overseas operations and supply chains. Some aspects of our economy may see slight near-term improvements in a modestly warmer world. However, the continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts. With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century–more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states.”
Ranking Member Johnson Statement on Vol. II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment Report
“This report provides the most comprehensive look at the effects of climate change on the United States ever, and the results, as we’ve sadly grown accustomed to, are quite terrifying – increased wildfires, more damaging storms, dramatic sea level rise, more harmful algal blooms, disease spread, dire economic impacts, the list goes on and on. That being said, all hope is not lost, but we must act now. We have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, work on adaptation and mitigation, and explore technology solutions such as geoengineering and carbon capture and sequestration. That is why I have made climate change one of my top priorities for the Committee going in to the next Congress.”
Keith’s note: Although NASA participated in this study and provided much of the underlying data for its observations and recommendations, NASA.gov has not posted any commentary or reference to this report. To be fair, the report was released on the day after Thanksgiving when a large number of people were not paying any attention to the news due to the fact that they took the day off. Sometimes releasing a controversial report on a day like this is a good way to bury things that will be controversial. Other times it is the best way to sneak a report out before it can be held back. Usually it is a bit of both.
Generally speaking analyses like these offer different future scenarios. For example, best case, worst case, and business as usual. Don’t know if that is so in this report, but as far as I can tell, the world, and especially the US, is on a business as usual path. People aren’t going to wake up and do something until we’ve long passed the point of no return, because they really don’t understand the full implications of lag time between cause and effect.
The basic problem is that reports like this really don’t offer any strategies for doing anything other than the obvious one of reducing emissions. Guess what? The U.S. has been reducing emissions since 2005. The problem is China and India have been increasing them, and no, the Paris Accord made no impact, indeed just the opposite, it gave the freedom to increase there CO2 as much as they want for many years into the future. Probably the only effective strategy would be to boycott goods produced there.
So in terms of things to take action on it’s really doesn’t provide any. For example it’s states that more Americans will move from rural areas to urban ones. News flash, that trend is over 100 years old and is based on technology reducing the need for farm workers while increasing the need for urban workers. Another is that sea levels will rise, another trend going on since the 1800’s and why many urban areas near coasts have made use of landfills to add land. Wall Street in N.Y. for example ran along the sea wall of the old Manhattan Island.
So maybe, just maybe, if a report like this produced rational and clear strategies to be implemented folks would actually do so. But all they do is stay the world will get worst, repent! There is nothing in here for city planners or engineers to really get their teeth into in terms of responding.
This is by far the most rational approach I have ever read to climate change. I’ve worked in environment, health, and safety. There are 1000s of rules companies have to follow. Some of these rules are unnecessary, some are ineffectual, many need to be revised. However, there has been effort to do so. Companies are made up of people. People that live and work in their community. They don’t want to do something that will result in poisoning their home. Every regulation violation I saw was now out of malice but of ignorance or human error.
The lack of strategies and possible solutions is a problem, but perhaps not one the report was intended to address. I believe it was intended to be an apolitical estimate of the problem, the evidence and research supporting that estimate, and _not_ including a politically debatable list of possible solutions. In other words, it was written to separate a statement of the problem from the debate over what to do about it.
You comment about China and India, however, is a bit off base and it’s something that isn’t discussed too often. Well, China and India and double standards in the Paris Accord is discussed, at length. But the key issue is that neither of those countries (or any other with lax requirements on reducing carbon dioxide production) are fully industrialized in the way the United States is.
As a random statistic, there are 0.91 cars per person in the United States (as of 2017), compared to 0.23 in China (2017) and 0.05 in India (2015.) People want a higher standard of living, just as the rural-to-urban shift you mention is driven as much by a desire to live in cities (or suburbs) as well as economic factors. And the standard of living is closely tied to energy use, and energy use is closely tied to carbon dioxide production. Saying China or India should reduce carbon dioxide production is equivalent to saying they should never aspire to a standard of living which is considered normal in North America.
Asking them to handle that with minimal increase in carbon dioxide production is reasonable. I was encouraged when a friend went on vacation in North Africa and mentioned people in the Atlas mountains who were telecommuting. It look like the internet has let some people and places skip over commuting to work, and the implied cars and highways. But I am also disappointed with Beijing. In going from a city full of bicycles to a city full of cars, they don’t seem to have paid much attention to bad experiences from the United States or Europe.
That aside, I’ll also offer the opinion that the report’s estimated impact (both social and economical) is probably an overestimate. Reports of this sort almost always assume the status quo in many ways. But people, and just about anything living, adapt to their environment.
You can, for example, estimate the cost of natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes, estimate the increased frequency of these due to global warming, and do the math to estimate future costs. What you can’t do is say that people will probably invest more in precautions and disaster relief, to minimize those costs as soon as they start increasing. A study can’t do a good job of that, because how, and how effectively, people will adapt is inherently unpredictable.
So I see the estimated impact in this report as an upper limit. If we don’t adapt at all, it may easily be as bad as it suggests. Since we will adapt, the impact will be less than that. But it isn’t clear if that’s just a little bit less or much less. I am fairly sure it’s going to be bad, and adaptation will simply reduce, not eliminate, the consequences. (Although, on a bad day, I am occasionally in a mind to say, “I don’t like the world we’ve made; tear it down.” Once you get into that wrecking ball line of thought, any disaster has a silver lining…)
It is always interesting to see how China and India love to brag about the industrialization but then play the underdeveloped country card when it suits their purpose. In terms of the CO2/Qulaity of Life relationship, nations like Sweden and Ireland do well with a much lower ratio. The U.S. dependence on stand alone homes, automobiles and jet travel inflats the relationship. Supposely as centrally planned economies with access to modern technology they should do better.
In terms of mitigating the risk the insurance industry is already driving it, an example of the power of free markets. A Ph.D. student of mine did his dissertation on it some years ago. Here is an article reference.
Marcus Benniefield and Thomas L. Matula, (2009). “The Insurance Industry and Climate Change Economics” Review of Business Research, 9 (5) 82-89.
The power of the insurance industry in this regard is reflected below.
https://www.usnews.com/news…
Trump Resort in Ireland Will Build Seawalls to Protect Against Climate Change
He was required to do this in order to get insurance on the resort.
Trump has repeatedly called for the US to increase mining and burning of coal. He has called this “clean coal” however “clean coal” term actually refers to low-sulfur coal. All coal is high in carbon, which causes global warming. The US remains tied with Canada and Australia and slightly behind Saudi Arabia as the highest per capita producers of CO2. Per capita emissions from the UK are only about 6 tons per year vs 15.5 in the US.
From the headline “Climate Change Report Sneaks Out Before It Could Be Stopped”, did anyone try to stop it? Did anyone up the ladder at the White House not know it was coming out? It wasn’t a mystery that this was coming out. Who specifically do you think was planning on stopping this? It was heavily covered even on a slow Friday news day so it didn’t sneak out.
It seems a UN 2018 Emissions Gap Report released today says, as reported by CNN,
“…the report states that the current emission targets for all countries would result in an average global temperature rise of 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
A 3.2 degree warmer world by the end of this century would bring about many of the dire consequences for human health, global economies and sea level rise that are projected from the “higher-emission” scenarios (also known as worst-case scenarios).”