Study: Human Disaster Looms if Global Temps Rise 4ºC

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/20-0




New research from Europe predicts a 4ºC global temperature rise is well within the range of possibility this century, and that even if the worst predictions of climate change disasters do not materialize the cost of this global change will mean "human disaster" for the planet.

As The Guardian's Fiona Harvey reports, the study--which appears in the journal Nature Geoscience— shows that as the world's oceans reach their capacity to absorb much of the world's carbon pollution, the increased temperature rise to the atmosphere will create "catastrophe across large swaths of the Earth, causing droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves, and drastic effects on agricultural productivity leading to secondary effects such as mass migration."

Climate research—which studies the complex interplay between global temperatures, the oceans, the atmosphere, and the world's regional biospheres—is not a science with either a winner or a single answer.

Ultimately, the science is one of deeply informed speculation—derived from complex computer modeling and close examination of the historic climate record—that seeks to unpack the complexity of the Earth's life-supporting dynamics.