Study: Current efforts not enough to prevent climate consequences

MIT researchers provide a window into the future with 2013 Energy and Climate Outlook.

As international negotiators discuss global efforts to confront climate change at the 19th United Nation’s Conference of Parties (COP19), a group of MIT researchers suggest that the current regional efforts may not be enough to avoid the dangerous consequences of rising emissions.

“As our global population swells to more than 10 billion by the end of this century, climate change is one of the forces of global change that will shape how the world feeds, shelters, transports, and otherwise attends to this growing mass of people,” says John Reilly, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and an author of the 2013 Energy and Climate Outlook. “Our latest Outlook is a window into the future as we view it in 2013, but it is still in our power to change what we see by taking action.”

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Changes in the global energy mix are partly responsible for a 12 percent dip in the projected CO2 emissions by the end of the century. Yet, these emissions are still projected to be 95 percent higher than in 2010. Even with cumulative emissions sinking slightly, the Outlook projects the world will warm by 3 to 6 degrees Celsius by 2100 compared to 2000, with the median forecast at 3.8 degrees Celsius.

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“Taking into account the vast uncertainty in climate projections, even in our most optimistic scenario we see that these changes will surely impact food and water resources, among other changes,” says Erwan Monier, an author of the study and a scientist at the Joint Program on Global Change.

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Source: MIT News