Credit: University of California - San Diego
Aug. 7, 2018 (Phys.org) -- Scientists at the University of California San Diego see an opportunity to shift the politics around climate change.
New research in climate science indicates that extreme events, such as heat waves, the collapse of major ice sheets, and mass extinctions are becoming dramatically more probable, though cuts in rising emissions appear unlikely with the stalled 2015 Paris agreement.
For the first time, scientists can make a strong case that no one is exempt from the extreme and immediate risks posed by a warming world.
The findings were recently published in a Foreign Affairs piece led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and co-authored with David Victor, a professor of political science at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation. They collaborated with Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Social Sciences members Msgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Partha Dasgupta, and Joachim von Braun.
The authors outline a variety of grim impacts scientists predict climate change will have on human health and food supply in the near future. But this does represent an opportunity: These same consequences from climate change on developing economies may give rise to the political capital needed to make deep cuts in carbon emissions.
(m0re)
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