NEW REPORT
WHAT LIES BENEATH
The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk
By David Spratt and Ian Dunlop
Forward by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Released 20 August 2018
“Human-induced climate change is an existential risk to human civilisation: an adverse outcome that will either annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential, unless carbon emissions are rapidly reduced.
Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.””
“Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences… …[the issue] now “is the very survival of our civilisation, where conventional means of analysis may become useless.”
Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, senior advisor to Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union
[Renew Economy AU, 20 August 2018 David Spratt and Ian Dunlop]
SUMMARY FROM OFFICIAL PDF [Quoted]
“Human-induced climate change is an existential risk to human civilisation: an adverse outcome that will either annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential, unless carbon emissions are rapidly reduced.
Special precautions that go well beyond conventional risk management practice are required if the increased likelihood of very large climate impacts — known as “fat tails” — are to be adequately dealt with.
The potential consequences of these lower-probability, but higher-impact, events would be devastating for human societies.
The bulk of climate research has tended to underplay these risks, and exhibited a preference for conservative projections and scholarly reticence, although increasing numbers of scientists have spoken out in recent years on the dangers of such an approach.
Climate policymaking and the public narrative are significantly informed by the important work of the IPCC.
However, IPCC reports also tend toward reticence and caution, erring on the side of “least drama”, and downplaying the more extreme and more damaging outcomes. Whilst this has been understandable historically, given the pressure exerted upon the IPCC by political and vested interests, it is now becoming dangerously misleading with the acceleration of climate impacts globally.
What were lower probability, higher-impact events are now becoming more likely.
This is a particular concern with potential climatic tipping points — passing critical thresholds which result in step changes in the climate system — such as the polar ice sheets (and hence sea levels), and permafrost and other carbon stores, where the impacts of global warming are non-linear and difficult to model with current scientific knowledge.
However the extreme risks to humanity, which these tipping points represent, justify strong precautionary management.
Under-reporting on these issues is irresponsible, contributing to the failure of imagination that is occurring today in our understanding of, and response to, climate change.
If climate policymaking is to be soundly based, a reframing of scientific research within an existential risk-management framework is now urgently required.
This must be taken up not just in the work of the IPCC, but also in the UNFCCC negotiations if we are to address the real climate challenge. Current processes will not deliver either the speed or the scale of change required.”
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