The New Climate Report Warns of a Sicker, Poorer World – The Atlantic

Source: The New Climate Report Warns of a Sicker, Poorer World – The Atlantic  by Robinson Meyer

Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published another one of its tomelike reports on the dangers of global warming. It is, it must be said, a dry and colorless document. Tasked with describing the impacts of climate change on human society and the natural world—which is to say, every living thing—as well as how humanity might adapt to those convulsions, it falls back on phrases such as “ecosystems, people, settlements, and infrastructure.” Kraftwerk was more lyrical. The style of every IPCC report is the same: It piles fact upon fact, until the picture is overwhelming.

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” this one concludes. In order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, humanity must begin to significantly reduce carbon emissions during its “brief and rapidly closing window” to do so.

If countries do not begin to limit their carbon pollution, then global warming could outpace our ability to adapt to it. At this point, that conclusion might seem obvious, and if the IPCC had a different job to do, perhaps it could simply assert: You get it by now. No more reports. Just do something! Its assignment, though, is to be a definitive compilation of human knowledge, so its scope has only grown. Technically, this report and the last one, which came out in August, are linked: They form Volumes I and II, respectively, of the Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change. Volume I looked at the physical and scientific basis of global warming; this update examines its effects on human society and the natural world. A third volume, about how to stop climate change, is due out this spring.

The character of climate change’s impacts on human society is coming into greater focus. Although this report is more than 3,500 pages, it reaches three conclusions that can be spelled out here.

First, global warming will be costly. Even in an optimistic warming scenario, the population exposed to once-in-a-century flooding will increase by at least 20 percent. Climate change will introduce new supply-chain risks, the report says, particularly for specialized commodities. It will shift fisheries and growing regions from one country to another. Even if humanity holds warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—which would require aggressive global climate policy—the chance of maize crops failing across much of the world at the same time is increased.

Climate change is already impeding economic growth. Over the past 50 years, agricultural productivity has increased, but the authors note (with medium confidence) that climate change may now be slowing that progress down. In North America, climate change has reduced agricultural productivity by 12.5 percent since 1961, the report claims. By the middle of the century, it will be too hot to work outside many days of the year across large swaths of the world.

The economic damage will not be limited to professions that require manual labor. By the middle of the century, the skiing and snowboarding season will be shortened across much of North America. (Yes, this is really one of the findings in the report.)

And the fount of wealth—human health—will also worsen. This is the report’s second conclusion: A warmer world will be a sicker world. “Climate change has adversely affected physical health of people globally and mental health of people in the assessed regions,” the report concludes. The risks of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral illness, will increase on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. Chikungunya virus will also spread more widely. Viruses like the coronaviruses that cause SARS or COVID-19, which leap from animals to people, are popping up in new areas. The risk of water-borne diseases has increased in certain regions, as has the risk of toxic algae blooms. Parts of the world have gotten dustier and smokier, worsening heart and lung health.

The report also examines how humans could adapt to climate change. And in that sense, it makes history: as the first of any IPCC report to summarize research on geoengineering. The report looks at solar-radiation management and some forms of carbon removal. Solar-radiation management, it concludes, introduces so many new risks that it is not yet well understood….