Club Of Rome Climate Change Report Predicts 2 Degree Celsius Warming By 2052

* Carbon emissions will cause 2 degree Celsius rise by 2052

* Rise of 2.8 degrees seen by 2080

By Nina Chestney

LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - Rising carbon dioxide emissions will cause a global average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius by 2052 and a 2.8 degree rise by 2080, as governments and markets are unlikely to do enough against climate change, the Club of Rome think tank said.

Failing to tackle climate change in the first half of this century will put the world on a dangerous track to warming in the second half, even though global population should peak in 2042 at 8.1 billion and economic growth will be much slower than expected in mature economies, the Switzerland-based body said in a report on Tuesday.

"It is unlikely that governments will pass necessary regulation to force the markets to allocate more money into climate-friendly solutions, and (we) must not assume that markets will work for the benefit of humankind," said Jorgen Randers, author of the report.

"We are emitting twice as much greenhouse gases every year as are absorbed by the world's forests and oceans. This overshoot will worsen and will peak in 2030."

In 2010, countries agreed that deep emissions cuts had to be made to keep an increase in global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels this century.

The Club of Rome report sees the 2 degree threshold being reached not at the end of the century, as many forecasters warn, but much sooner.

Scientists say that crossing this threshold risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common but efforts so far to cut greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop a rise beyond 2 degrees this century.

CONSUMPTION

By 2052, China's per capita consumption will be at least two thirds that of the United States, while the average economic growth of 14 emerging nations including Brazil, India and South Africa, will treble over the next 40 years, Randers said.

"This growth will improve living standards for many, but it will come at a cost for the global climate. While growth will not be as explosive as in China, it will still be heavy enough to keep emissions from these nations growing until the 2040s," he added.

By contrast, the mature economies of the United States and Europe will see declining or stable consumption, which should help prevent the depletion of oil, food and water by 2052.

Last year, the United Nations' Environment Programme said the gap between countries' emissions cut pledges and what was needed to remain under 2 degrees had widened and emissions in 2020 would rise to between 6 billion and 11 billion tonnes over what is needed to limit global warming to safe levels.

The International Energy Agency also warned that the world may not be able to limit temperature rise if new international climate action is not taken by 2017 as so many fossil fuel power plants and factories are being built.

A new global climate pact forcing the world's biggest polluters, including the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force by 2020 - seen by many as too late to limit climate damage.

Countries have agreed to raise $10 billion a year in aid from 2010-12 to help developing nations adapt to climate change, rising to $100 billion a year by 2020.

But the economic downturn has constrained government funds, and carbon markets, which should incentivise clean energy investment in the private sector, are failing to deliver. (Editing by Anthony Barker)

Also on HuffPost:

From our partners

• How Two Determined Sisters Set Up A Pet Rescue Pipeline To Colorado - Mother Nature Network
• Panel Finds Flaws In Hurricane Sandy Warning System - Climate Central
• 11 Images And Facts About A Misunderstood Creature - Mother Nature Network

Comments

[roger stillick]

09:55 PM on 05/21/2012

this is my 2nd post, one is hung up in comments fax chk 052112 1822 pdt...
maxwells= when did I change my mind ?? about a month ago, talking w/ my biochemist son...
became a Long History buff to try to keep up with son's studies, and a long fan of Al Gore..
what controlls the co2 level of 350ppm is= WKP Azolla Event 49my (look it up)...
the Azolla Event dropped the co2 level from 3500ppm to 650ppm over 800kyrs... the co2 level continued to drop and stabilized at 350ppm 15my, resulting in frozen poles and an ice age...15 millon years later we arrive at today...
in our entire history we have been stuck in a frozen world due to sequestered co2...
anything we can do probably wont stop the planet from correcting itself to 3500ppm...

[alteredstory]

03:58 AM on 06/03/2012

You're ignoring that fact that we are digging up and burning the sequestered CO2. It's not "just happening", humans, yourself included, are DOING it.

You're like a serial killer who says "What's the big deal? These people were always going to die!"

[roger stillick]

01:46 PM on 06/03/2012

hi alteredhistory= you asked when I-myself realized there was an actual problem, and my son said "yes Dad there is and this is the real problem...Azola Event"
We may be actually repairing the Earth...OR NOT !! and that is what got my attention...
Thank you for listening, you may document this, RS

[Cayce58]

11:31 PM on 06/04/2012

The worst case scenario in computer models says a 1000ppm CO2 level equals a 15 degree rise in temp. 85 million years ago, the North Atlantic belched up its methyl hydrate and caused a 6 degree rise in temp. One large land mammal survived.

[leonel]

10:15 PM on 05/20/2012

There is an article on ABC News about how if temperatures get 4 degrees hotter that it will cause more deaths than World War II, the worst in the world so far. And the question is whether the persons who can see it coming, like the ones who could see it before WW II, are doing enough to warn the world. Seems that they are but there are many deniers and so on.

Actually there are more basic questions to consider. Such as that even if there are dire warnings, people will essentially not listen enough. Does not mean not try to warn in all the possible ways, but that the world in general is apathetic and fatalistic. This can be seen in so many areas---- basically the vast majority are only interested in their immediate environment and their personal problems.

There is some truth to this perspective and so there will be preparations for mass population dislocations, huge weather events, much desertification of the planet, extinctions and so on.

Make all the warnings possible, including some not yet figured out, expect that governments will make some efforts but not enough, and study how the increasing problems will help to wake people up. And expect something eventually worse that WW II.

[Dan55886]

08:35 PM on 05/16/2012

These predictions are subjective to many factors. Any predictions must be weighed with great caution.

[alteredstory]

04:00 AM on 06/03/2012

And in general, especially given that so far most predictions have fallen short of the mark, it's a good idea to plan for the worst-case scenario, and hope for the best.

It's why we don't drive cars with large spikes sticking out of the steering wheel at our faces - there's always a chance that we'll get into a car crash.

In fact, there's LESS of a chance that you'll get into a crash tomorrow than there is that climate change is going to do a vast amount of damage this century.

[maxwells]

05:15 PM on 05/15/2012

Free yourself by discarding one global warming denial myth each day!

CO2 from land-based volcanoes is below 1% of human contributions.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-cosub2sub-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html

And

"...volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year." - about 0.3% of CO2 from human activities."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-volcanoes-affect-w

Summarizes the U.S. Geological Service...

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php

"The half dozen or so published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 132 million (minimum) to 378 million (maximum) metric tons per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998; Kerrick, 2001). If estimate medians and author-preferred estimates of these studies are used to lessen the influence of outlier estimates, the range is restricted to about 150-270 million metric tons of CO2 per year. The current anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of some 36,300-million metric tons of CO2 per year is about 100 to 300 times larger than these estimated ranges for global volcanic CO2 emissions."

Rather, the main impact of major volcanic eruptions, like Pinatubo - 1991, Agung - 1963, Bezymianny - 1956 is global cooling, via stratospheric injection of aerosolized sulfates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Volcanism

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Volcano/

[JTaylor405]

06:28 PM on 05/15/2012

Impressive, Maxwells. Thanks for the contributions!

[Ta Zoltana]

12:39 AM on 05/15/2012

Sad. I'm pinning my hopes on some group of smart-aleck, teenage, geek boy-men to radically re-invent the battery, along with building the more efficient solar/wind/tidal/geothermal energy-collectors. Our species could change direction.

[ogis]

05:02 PM on 05/21/2012

Me too cause my generation efft'up bad!

[Cayce58]

11:18 PM on 06/04/2012

After transportation the 2nd biggest contributor to CO2 is cement. They just invented a corbon negative cement. Now....without dictatorial power, who's going to switch.

[maxwells]

10:24 AM on 05/14/2012

NOAA global temperature update:

2012: R. S. Vose, et al., NOAA's Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis,
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, online April 12, 2012
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00241.1

"The new version is broadly consistent with previous global analyses, exhibiting a trend of

0.076 °C per decade since 1901,
0.162 °C per decade since 1979,

and widespread warming in both time periods.

In general, the new release exhibits only modest differences with its predecessor, the most obvious being very slightly more warming at the global scale (0.004 °C dec−1 since 1901) and slightly different trend patterns over the terrestrial surface.”

[rav1267]

11:42 PM on 05/13/2012

It feels like 2 degree celsius already here, they probably will be 200 degree celsius increase by 2053.

[alteredstory]

12:17 PM on 05/15/2012

It is for some parts of the planet - the farther north you go, the faster it's warming. Two degrees for planetary average could translate to an average of twenty or more in the arctic.

I'm not sure what the exact ratio is.

[jimboy71]

12:48 PM on 05/15/2012

If we were to fully greehouse the planet, and return CO2 levels to their archaic highs, it would be tropical at the poles...

[rav1267]

05:26 PM on 05/15/2012

I live in the state of Georgia and every year it seem that the temperature is getting hotter. We stop planting beacase everything dies with the heat, I fear for the polar ice caps they are melting at a rate of 50 feet per year.

[mike382]

11:14 AM on 05/12/2012

The worse thing about it comes when I look at the comments and see that a used car salesman, an engineer, a mailman, or a doctor think they can know better about global warming than the people who dedicate their entire lives to study climate change just because they make their own "research".
And by research i mean "i looked some up failed predictions about global warming on the internet, i am now a climate scientist"
crazy conspiracy theorists and climate deniers.

[banana republican]

10:44 PM on 05/11/2012

What would the temperature change be by 2052 if you took away the CO2?

[gallon]

07:37 AM on 05/12/2012

If you take away all the CO2, all the flora will die. Please don't take away all the CO2.

[jimboy71]

04:20 PM on 05/12/2012

We would drop to an average of -17 degrees celcius.

[Die Kalt Sonne]

05:34 PM on 05/11/2012

AGW Believers -

Consider the forecasting accuracy of the models of the revered climate scientists, relied upon by the IPCC ("we're from the government and we're here to help you") as justification for wealth redistribution on a global scale -
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/IPCC1995_Fail.htm

[gallon]

07:38 AM on 05/12/2012

Crazy conspiracy theorists.

[DocSkull]

11:20 AM on 05/12/2012

If scientists had the ability to redistribute wealth, wouldn't at least some of them try to get it for themselves? They aren't particularly well paid. They even volunteer their time on the IPCC.

If you are concerned about large quantities of American money going elsewhere, then you should be heartily in favor of capturing wind and solar energy.

[Katmandu01]

04:46 PM on 05/10/2012

It's starting to look like the warnings presented in The Limits to Growth may not have been so far off after all.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Looking-Back-on-the-Limits-of-Growth.html

[maxwells]

04:04 PM on 05/10/2012

BASIC QUESTION:

Have any of you, within the past few years, changed your minds, deciding that man-made global warming is real? If so, what prompted it?

[Junksciencecutecritters]

05:28 PM on 05/10/2012

No, it's still a scam. It always was and aways will be.

[maxwells]

05:52 PM on 05/10/2012

Are you now claiming telepathic powers, JUNK?

When did you become qualified to speak for everyone who reads these comments?
And why would we believe you?

I.e., aren't you the same SoCalHotOne who, until you were banned for repeatedly calling other commenters "commies", continually attacked NOAA, NCDC, and every other official U.S. or European data site, while YOU ALSO CLAIMED THAT THERE'S BEEN NO GLOBAL WARMING AT ALL ANYWHERE ON EARTH AT ANY TIME SINCE THERMOMETERS WERE INVENTED?

And didn't you repeat this claim incessantly for more than a year, all based on a web site with the following rant on its home page:

"Jesus Supported Separation of Church and State: "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" [Matthew 22:21]

United Nations No Longer Supports Separation of Church and State: According to Article 18 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) "everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" But On Dec. 18, 2009 the U.N. General Assembly adopted yet another resolution condemning "defamation of religions" to suppress freedom of speech and calling for what amounts to a global blasphemy law. "

http://www.appinsys.com/

Is that the sort of thing real science sites do?

[jimboy71]

02:10 PM on 05/11/2012

Since you are demonstrably duplicitous and mendacious...there is no reason to pay you any mind.

[AndyB62]

12:06 AM on 05/11/2012

Why do you keep asking this question in thread after thread?

[maxwells]

11:42 AM on 05/11/2012

I'd like to know what actually prompts people to change their minds.

So far, I've received one straight-forward response. He says direct
eyeball experience changed his mind.

[jimboy71]

02:11 PM on 05/11/2012

Don't you think it is significant, given the issue and the obfuscation?

[This American]

12:17 AM on 05/10/2012

The Club of Rome is filling the vacuum left when the Weekly World News stopped publishing a few years back. Do you suppose they could tell us what happened to Batboy?

This AGW nonsense has become quite pathetic. The proponents are looking more and more like the Japanese soldiers found deep in some jungle in the 1960's who thought WWII was still going on.

[Jarrod Putnam]

07:43 AM on 05/10/2012

Your most likely think it is nonsense because you simply don't understand any of it.

[Katmandu01]

04:43 PM on 05/10/2012

So true. He has a tough time wading through all of that "sciency stuff". Those egg heads use words that have way too many syllables and what's with all these letters after their names?

[jimboy71]

02:12 PM on 05/11/2012

Do you have any actual data or evidence to support your smear against the Club of Rome, or are you just going to present nothing, once again in favour of your "arguments"?

[This American]

11:26 PM on 05/11/2012

The claim that the Club of Rome has made here is nothing but an unfounded assertion, just like the Weekly World News used to print.

[Gerald Villella]

10:33 AM on 05/12/2012

Here is a recently published, peer-reviewed study indicating that CO2 is a minimal contributor to the greenhouse gas effect, and cannot be an effective "control knob" to control warming. Naturally occurring water vapor accounts for more than 50% of the GHG effect. http://www.tswj.com/2012/761473/ This Club of Rome article does not specify the data or other scientific bases for its projections, so it it is likely influenced by whatever data adjustments Hansen and Co. have been putting out to rehab their failed model projections.

[Junksciencecutecritters]

03:50 PM on 05/09/2012

“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself."
- Club of Rome

[This American]

12:19 AM on 05/10/2012

The Club of Rome boys need to join the Club of Hemlock if they really believe this nonsense.

[DocSkull]

11:41 AM on 05/10/2012

We are in control of our own pollution.

[Jorgelzorro]

08:12 AM on 05/09/2012

Im glad ill be dead by then

[greengrl]

08:58 AM on 05/09/2012

Unfortunately I think that is why many folks don't seem to care.

[itruth]

08:26 PM on 05/09/2012

EXACTLY! F&F!

[DoctorDirector]

04:29 AM on 05/15/2012

True -- but what seems to get through to my (college) students is when I tell them this: your kids cannot have kids. Period. Because they won't live long enough to do so. That is the only thing I have found to lead them to carefully contemplate the math.

And if our CO2 continues to rise as projected, it's absolutely true.

If our tipping point is (as most scientific projections have said it is) 400 ppm of CO2, then we have 2 years before we reach that tipping point (after which we can't halt the progression of climate change). See www.co2now.org Theoretically, I guess we could do it, but I don't know how we really could, practically speaking. 2052 actually seems to me like they gave us a long time.

[ubrew12]

03:16 PM on 05/09/2012

I'll second that. I think the Club of Romes estimates are accurate. I used to think we'd do something about Global Warming, but I don't see serious action until around 2025, due to the economic (and probably political) turmoil that the world is about to embrace. Oh well, ce la vie.

[itruth]

08:34 PM on 05/09/2012

I think Kurzweil said that we would see the 'Singularity' by then;so i posit that we may have no choice in the matter.Our AI friends might just solve this for us;or it could go Skynet on us and [frying pan or fire] too many humans in a finite space.
No wonder people get a little weird when talking about this;seems rather hopeless.

[This American]

12:24 AM on 05/10/2012

We need a crash program to build an AC unit for everyone on earth. We should also mandate that all new cars are equipped with factory air. If we just do these two things we can quit worrying about CAFE standards, those ridiculous doggie doo lightbulbs, windmills and all this other nonsense once and for all.