US report details climate change cost

Dire warning at odds with Trump’s administration

WASHINGTON, Nov 24, (RTRS): Climate change will cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure, according to a government report issued on Friday that the White House called inaccurate.

The congressionally mandated report, written with the help of more than a dozen US government agencies and departments, outlined the projected impact of global warming on every corner of American society in a dire warning that is at odds with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil-fuels agenda.

“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 US states,” the report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II, said.

Global warming would disproportionately hurt the poor, broadly undermine human health, damage infrastructure, limit the availability of water, alter coastlines, and boost costs in industries from farming, to fisheries and energy production, the report said.

But it added that projections of further damage could change if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply curbed, even though many of the impacts of climate change – including more frequent and more powerful storms, droughts and flooding – are already under way. “Future risks from climate change depend primarily on decisions made today,” it said.

The report supplements a study issued last year that concluded humans are the main driver of global warming and warned of catastrophic effects to the planet.

The studies clash with policy under President Donald Trump, who has been rolling back Obama-era environmental and climate protections to maximize production of domestic fossil fuels, including crude oil, already the highest in the world, above Saudi Arabia and Russia.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the new report was “largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that...there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population.”

The government’s next update of the National Climate Assessment, she said, “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”

Trump last year announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Deal agreed by nearly 200 nations to combat climate change, arguing the accord would hurt the US economy and provide little tangible environmental benefit. Trump and several members of his cabinet have also repeatedly cast doubt on the science of climate change, arguing that the causes and impacts are not yet settled.

Environmental groups said the report reinforced their calls for the United States to take action on climate change.

Oceans heating faster:

The world’s oceans have absorbed more heat than previously thought over the last quarter of a century, scientists said Thursday, leaving Earth more sensitive still to the effects of climate change.

Oceans cover more than two thirds of the planet’s surface and play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth.

According to their most recent assessment this month, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say the world’s oceans have absorbed 90 percent of the temperature rise caused by man-made carbon emissions.

But new research published in the journal Nature used a novel method of measuring ocean temperature.

It found that for each of the last 25 years, oceans may have absorbed heat energy equivalent to as much as 150 times the amount of electricity mankind produces annually.

That is between 10-70 percent higher than previous studies showed.

Whereas those studies relied on tallying the excess heat produced by known man-made greenhouse gas emissions, a team of US-based scientists focused on two gases found naturally in the atmosphere: oxygen and carbon dioxide. (AFP)