/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3959083

>the risky option has no reward other than its environmental one. The environment takes a back seat to industry in my eyes.

For the sources posted here (from the mining industry!) it seems that the Australian mining industry will take a small hit, and we've seen that climate policies have not seriously hurt any economy it was tried out it.

But what's the risk of unmitigated global warming?

>>3958356

The two options are incomparable. The latest projections are in agreement: even 3-4 degrees of global warming is enough to raise sea levels tens of meters, and the rapidity of change is guaranteed mass extinction. All the crazy droughts, fires, and flooding these past 2 years will become regular events rather than exceptional ones. And all this is actually the low end of the range of probable warming under business-as-usual.

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.short
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/2/024002/fulltext
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/83/1/thomascd1.pdf
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/tao.zhang/2010GL046582.pdf

Munich Re and the other major reinsurance companies think that global warming is an enormous risk. As discussed previously, the lowest and most unrealistic expected impact on GDP from unmitigated climate change is higher than the most expensive mitigation policy. From a risk management perspective, it's ludicrously irresponsible NOT to have a climate policy.

>>1328745

Climatologists modelling future changes do not make "predictions." They are not meteorologists. They will not say, for instance, "On 24 March 2038 the temperature in Memphis will be 25 C." Rather, they run their GCMs many times, getting a range of probable changes in the future. For example, here's a Met Office model which projects somewhere between 5.5 C and 7.1 C increase above 1990 levels by 2100. We don't know what it will be <span class="math">exactly,[/spoiler] but we can determine a range of stronger statistical likelihood.