World Bank warns of ‘4 degree’ threshold

[Mark]

World Bank warns of ‘4 degree’ threshold

The World Bank is urging stepped-up efforts to meet world carbon reduction goals after looking at what it says would be the catastrophic consequences if average world temperatures rise more than 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In what World Bank President Jim Yong Kim acknowledged was a “doomsday scenario,” a new bank study cited the 4 degree increase as a threshold that would likely trigger widespread crop failures and malnutrition and dislocate large numbers of people from land inundated by rising seas.

World climate goals aim to hold the mean temperature increase to under 2 degrees Celsius, by curbing emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat — a phenomenon already felt to have boosted average temperatures nearly 1 degree from levels present before the start of the industrial age, Kim said in a briefing last week.

That goal is unlikely to be met, he said, with an increase of 3 or 3.5 degrees Celsius now considered probable.

The report noted that a drop in average temperature of around 4.5 degrees Celsius — more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit — triggered the last ice age, and it predicted that a temperature increase of that magnitude would similarly reshape the planet.

In looking at the effects of a 4 degree increase, Kim said the bank was hoping to spark countries to act more aggressively to achieve climate goals and to prompt poorer nations to begin planning ways to offset the long list of potential impacts.

Those could include sea levels as much as 3 feet higher than currently expected — a potentially devastating problem for large coastal cities in Asia and Africa. Warming on such a scale could also limit access to fresh water for irrigation and cause heat, drought and disease problems that could make it more difficult to meet world food demands and improve health.

rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/world-bank-warns-of-4-degree-threshhold/2012/11/19/aa298dd0-3023-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_story.html

[Mark]

Why is the WORLD BANK pushing global warming? 

[Kilika]

First sentence...

The World Bank is urging stepped-up efforts to meet world carbon reduction goals

The love of money.