Imperial College London Study - Climate Adaptation Cost Likely 2-3X More Than UN Framework Assumes

LONDON, UK, August 27, 2009 (ENS) - United Nations climate change negotiations are based on "substantial" underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to global warming, scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned today. The real costs of adaptation are likely to be two to three times greater than estimates for the year 2030 made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2007, say Professor Martin Parry and colleagues in a new report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

Launched today at a news conference in London, the report finds that costs will be even greater when the full range of climate impacts on human activities is considered. Parry and colleagues warn that this underestimate of the cost of adaptation could weaken the outcome of UNFCCC negotiations, which are due to culminate in Copenhagen in December with a global deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions that will take effect when the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012.

"The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement," says Parry, visiting research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. "But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed."

The UNFCCC has estimated the global costs of adapting to climate change to be US$40-170 billion each year. But the report's authors say that these estimates were produced too quickly and did not include key sectors such as energy, manufacturing, retailing, mining, tourism and ecosystems. Other sectors that the UNFCCC did include were only partially covered. "Just looking in depth at the sectors the UNFCCC did study, we estimate adaptation costs to be two to three times higher, and when you include the sectors the UNFCCC left out the true cost is probably much greater," warns Parry, who co-chaired the IPCC working group on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation between 2002 and 2008.

EDIT

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2009/2009-08-27-01.asp

And what new things will we learn as we adapt that will save us oodles of money in the future?

And most of all, what difference does it make if adaptation *does* cost $500 billion annually? Hell, the US alone spends around $750 billion per year on "defense."

Money is the least of our problems in dealing with anthropogenic global warming.