Study Claims Some Future Impacts of Climate Change Are Unavoidable

Nov 25, 2014 07:22 AM EST | Matt Mercuro

The World Bank released a study this week saying that some future impacts of climate change, like more extremes of heat and sea level rise, are unavoidable even if governments act to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Past and predicted emissions from factories, cars and power plants have "locked" globe on a path towards a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times by 2050.

"This means that climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be simply unavoidable," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said during a telephone news conference on the report, titled "Turn down the Heat, Confronting the New Climate Normal," according to Reuters.

"The findings are alarming," he said.

Sea levels would keep rising for centuries since vast ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw only slowly. Seas would rise 7 ft. 6 in. in the next 2,000 years if temperatures stayed at current levels.

Temperatures have already risen about 1.4F since the Industrial Revolution, the report said.

"Dramatic climate changes and weather extremes are already affecting millions of people around the world, damaging crops and coastlines and putting water security at risk," Kim wrote in the report.

Kim pointed to the hottest November day in Australia during a recent Group of 20 summit "or the five to six feet of snow that just fell on Buffalo" in the U.S. as examples of extremes.

The worst impacts of global warming could still be avoided by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the report said.

A rise of 2 degrees (3.6F) in average world temperature would mean a reduction in Brazilian crop yields of up to 70 percent for soybean and up to 50 percent for wheat by 2050.

Officials from nearly 200 nations are expected to meet in Peru from Dec. 1-12 to work on a deal due in Paris no later than next year, to slow climate change.

Kim defended World Bank policies that permit investments in fossil fuels in developing nations in rare cases.

"Sub-Saharan Africa has a total of about 80 gigawatts of installed (electricity generating) capacity, which is less than Spain," he added, according to Reuters.

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