5 Ways Climate Change Will Cause Massive Disruptions For People, Ecosystems Worldwide

By: By Terrell Johnson

Published: March 31,2014

 

 

 

 

If the world continues on its current path – one in which countries keep pumping ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, primarily from burning coal, oil and gas – then a future of food and water shortages, massive losses of animal species and ecosystems, and the loss of entire nations to sea level rise almost certainly awaits in the not-too-distant future.
That was the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of several hundred scientists from around the world who were assembled by the United Nations to assess and present their findings on the state of the world's science on climate change.
"We're all sitting ducks," said Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the lead authors of the IPCC's latest report, released Sunday night.
Titled "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability," the report details climate change impacts closely linked with one another: as global warming sends temperatures rising, it will lead to both falling yields for agricultural crops and decreasing water supplies for millions of people, as sources of freshwater that have been relied upon for generations dry up.
That means an increased likelihood – and more devastating impacts – for all kinds of extreme weather events as well, the panel reports. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change," said IPCC chair Rajendra K. Pachauri.

1) Climate change is already having major impacts on the world.

In the Summary for Policymakers that accompanies the report, the IPCC said:
In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans. Evidence of climate-change impacts is strongest and most comprehensive for natural systems. Some impacts on human systems have also been attributed to climate change, with a major or minor contribution of climate change distinguishable from other influences.
In response to Earth's warming, glaciers around the world have shrunk and permafrost regions have warmed and thawed – which has "major implications" for water supplies – while many animal species (both in the ocean and on land) have shifted their geographic ranges as well as their migration, mating and seasonal activities.
For life in the oceans, this means they're moving toward the poles in search of cooler temperatures; animals on land are also moving northward, in search of the more suitable climates that existed years and decades ago.
Climate change already has impacted food crop production, the IPCC added, hitting wheat and maize (corn) crops hardest so far. Since the group's last report in 2007, rapid food prices have followed climate extremes in key food-producing regions.
“We’re not in a world where climate change is a future hypothetical," said Christopher Field, the IPCC Working Group II co-chair, at Sunday's press conference. "There’s no question we live in a world that’s already altered by climate change."

2) The world's most vulnerable people will be hit hardest.

IPCC: Differences in vulnerability and exposure arise from non-climatic factors and from multidimensional inequalities often produced by uneven development processes ... People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally, or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change.
People who live in the world's tropical regions, those who depend on rain-fed agriculture and the oceans for their food and their livelihoods, and people who live on low-lying island nations are likely to feel the most acute impacts of climate change.
Sea level rise already poses major risks to small countries like Marshall Islands and the Maldives, which are likely to be swallowed up by the ocean in the coming decades. That means their tens of thousands of citizens will become climate refugees in search of new places to live.
Meanwhile in countries like India, hundreds of millions of people who live in rural areas still depend on rainfall, rather than modern farming practices like irrigation, to grow their crops. "The green revolution has not touched them at all," said Dr. Pachauri. "They are the ones who are going to be worst hit. These are the sections of society that are going to suffer the worst impacts of climate change."
As warming-related sea level rise occurs, it will worsen coastal flooding and tropical cyclone-related storm surge – think of storms like 2012's Hurricane Sandy and 2013's Typhoon Haiyan – while also making events like the Russian heat wave in 2010 and the Australian heat wave of 2013-2014 both more likely and more severe.

3) Climate change will make violent conflict worse, and vice-versa.

IPCC: Violent conflict increases vulnerability to climate change. Large-scale violent conflict harms assets that facilitate adaptation, including infrastructure, institutions, natural resources, social capital, and livelihood opportunities.
Though the IPCC authors agree that the impact of climate change on violent conflict is "contested," and take care not to say that wars will necessarily be caused by climate change, they emphasize that the world's poorest regions are particularly susceptible to the impacts of both.
That's because the impacts of climate change – whether from heat waves and droughts that affect food and water supplies, or from storms that erode resilience to climate extremes by damaging or destroying infrastructure – are likely to be particularly severe for people in coastal and rural areas.
In places that don't have the same kinds of institutions found in the developed world – who have no path to adapt to or mitigate the impacts of climate change – its effects will be felt most acutely.

4) Despite little action on controlling emissions, adaptation is now underway.

IPCC: Adaptation experience is accumulating across regions in the public and private sector and within communities. Governments at various levels are starting to develop adaptation plans and policies and to integrate climate-change considerations into broader development plans.
The world's industrial nations have made little progress to date in controlling their emissions of greenhouse gases, at least in terms of making meaningful reductions that would keep warming in the decades ahead to 2°C above the pre-industrial era, the widely-acknowledged target for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
Many nations have begun taking significant action toward adapting to climate change, however. The IPCC points to many nations in Europe and Australasia that already have incorporated adaptation planning at "all levels of government," including coastal and water management, land-use planning, and planning for sea level rise and water availability.
This is happening at the municipal and regional level in the United States, especially in major urban cities like New York and Chicago, while countries in Central and South America are creating conservation agreements and water resources management plans for their agricultural and tourist sectors.

5) The world has the information it needs to take action on climate change today.

At the Sunday press conference announcing the report, the members of the IPCC couldn't have been more clear: "Climate is changing, there is no doubt anymore," said Michel Jarraud, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, which co-sponsors the IPCC.
“Now we’re at the point where there is so much information, we can no longer plead ignorance," he added. "We know we have the information to make decisions."
Projections for the impacts climate change will have on food security, water supplies and human health and security are "profound" and "grave," said Pachauri, adding that we have "much greater certainty and far greater detail today" on these impacts than in the group's last report in 2007.
"There is a reason for the world not [to] neglect the findings of this report," he added. "We have reasons to believe that if the world doesn't do anything about mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases, and the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very social stability of human systems could be at stake."
Read the full IPCC report here, or watch the webcast of the report's presentation here.

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Bear Glacier (2005)

In the approximately 80 years between these photos, Bear Glacier's piedmont lobe has retreated completely out of the field of view. Large icebergs, floating in the ice-marginal lake that fills the basin formerly occupied by Bear Glacier's piedmont lobe, represent the only glacier ice that is visible. (USGS/Bruce Molnia)