Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change, according to a leaked draft United Nations report.

Global warming already is affecting “all continents and across the oceans,” and further pollution from heat-trapping gases will raise the likelihood of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” according to the document obtained by Bloomberg.

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.

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The study is the most important document produced by the UN about global warming, summarizing hundreds of papers. It’s designed to present the best scientific and economic analysis to government leaders and policymakers worldwide. It feeds into the UN-led effort drawing in more than 190 nations for an agreement on limiting emissions.

The report “will provide policymakers with a scientific foundation to tackle the challenge of climate change,” IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in a statement from the panel’s office in Geneva. “It would help governments and other stakeholders work together at various levels, including a new international agreement to limit climate change” that countries intend to broker by the end of next year.

Leaked Report

The draft, dated Aug. 25, was obtained by Bloomberg from a person with official access to it who asked not to be further identified because it hasn’t been published yet. It’s subject to line-by-line revision by representatives of governments around the world, and a final report is scheduled to be published on Nov. 2 in Copenhagen.

Climate Change

Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC, declined to comment on the contents of the report. The draft “is still a work in progress, which will certainly change — indeed that is the point of the review — and so it would be premature to discuss its contents at this stage,” Lynn said.

Economic losses for a warming level of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels may reach 2 percent of global income, according to the panel, which acknowledged existing estimates are “incomplete,” and the calculation has “limitations.”

Rising Temperatures

Temperatures have already warmed by 0.85 of a degree since 1880, it said. That’s quicker than the shift in the climate that brought the end of the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.

The panel also acknowledged there are costs associated with keeping the temperature rise since industrialization below the 2-degree target. That’s the level endorsed by the nations negotiating on a climate deal. Doing so may lead to losses in global consumption of 1.7 percent in 2030, 3.4 percent in 2050 and 4.8 percent in 2100, according to the paper.

Source: IPCC WGII AR5 Chapter 19

“Risks from mitigation can be substantial, but they do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation action,” the authors wrote.

The 127-page document includes a 32-page summary and is filled with language highlighting the dangers from rising temperatures. Those include damage to crop production, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and more pervasive heatwaves. The report mentions the word “risk” more than 350 times; “vulnerable” or “vulnerability” are written 61 times; and “irreversible” comes up 48 times.

Ice Melting

Possible permanent changes include the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland. That would boost sea levels by as much as 7 meters (23 feet) and threaten coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok along with island nations such as the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

The scientists said they have “medium confidence” that warming of less than 4 degrees Celsius would be enough to trigger such a melt, which would take at least a millennium.

Other effects the report flags include reduced food security as production of crops such as wheat, rice and maize in the tropics is damaged, melting of Arctic sea ice, and acidification of the oceans.

The report also shows the scale of the challenge in limiting global warming. To stand a two-thirds chance of meeting the temperature goal, cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since 1870 must be limited to about 2,900 gigatons, according to the study. Two thirds of that carbon already has been released into the atmosphere, they said.

Temperature Range

The surface air temperature is projected to rise under all scenarios examined by the IPCC. It expects a gain of 0.3 degrees to 4.8 degrees for this century, depending on what policies governments pursue. That range would lead to a sea-level increase of 26 centimeters (10 inches) to 82 centimeters in addition to the 19 centimeters already recorded.

“Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases cease,” the researchers said. “The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”

Total annual anthropogenic GHG emissions (GtCO2eq/yr) by groups of gases 1970-2010: CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes; CO2 from Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU); methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O); fluorinated gases8 covered under the Kyoto Protocol (F-gases). At the right side of the figure GHG emissions in 2010 are shown again broken down into these components with the associated uncertainties (90% confidence interval) indicated by the error bars. Total anthropogenic GHG emissions uncertainties are derived from the individual gas estimates as described in Chapter 5 [5.2.3.6]. Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion are known within 8% uncertainty (90% confidence interval). CO2 emissions from FOLU have very large uncertainties attached in the order of ±50%. Uncertainty for global emissions of CH4, N2O and the Fgases has been estimated as 20%, 60% and 20%, respectively. 2010 was the most recent year for which emission statistics on all gases. Source: IPCC

While the measures exist that may keep temperature gains below the 2-degree threshold, there are “substantial technological, economic, social, and institutional challenges,” according to the study.

Cost of Delay

Delaying action will only increase the risks and costs, it said. Putting off work on the issue until 2030 may raise costs by 44 percent through 2050, it said.

Ruling out certain technological solutions would also add to the costs of fighting climate change, according to the paper.

Without equipment to capture emissions from factories and power plants and store them underground, known as carbon capture and storage, the cost of the most stringent CO2 reductions could more than double, according to the paper. Eliminating nuclear power would raise costs by 7 percent and limiting wind and solar farms would do so by 6 percent.

In a nod to skeptics who argue temperatures haven’t significantly warmed since 1998, the researchers said that climate models aren’t so good at explaining short-term fluctuations in the temperature and that “natural variability” may be part of what’s being observed.

Warming Slowdown

The pace of temperature increases slowed to about 0.05 of a degree per decade from 1998 through 2012 from 0.12 degrees per decade for the longer period spanning from 1951 to 2012. The IPCC said 111 out of 114 climate models predicted a greater warming trend than was observed from 1998 to 2012. And for the period from 1984 to 1998, most models showed less warming than was finally recorded, they said.

Over longer periods, the climate models seem to be more accurate. From 1951 to 2012, “simulated surface warming trends are consistent with the observed trend,” the IPCC researchers said.

The UN panel since September has published three separate reports into the physical science of global warming, its impacts, and ways to fight it. The study leaked yesterday, called the “Synthesis Report” intends to pick out the most important findings and present them in a way that lawmakers can easily understand.

In all, more than 800 scientists from around the world have helped write the four reports, an exercise the UN last completed in 2007. It also uses inputs from earlier studies by the IPCC into renewable energy and extreme events and disasters.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net Tony Barrett

• Energy and Climate
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June 20, 2013 | Geoff Russell

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Over the past couple of weeks there’s been more than a little crowing about Australia’s one millionth rooftop solar installation amid the long running genuflection at what has been called Germany’s solar miracle.

Solar and renewable apostles should keep in mind that if Germany meets its targets and reaches 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, it will have taken about 50 years from the time it began its feed-in tariff in 2000.

Is this really a miracle or is it more like molasses on a frozen alpine morning?

Anybody with a solid understanding of the climate science understands the need for a rapid rollout of cleaner electricity as part of any effective response.

How do the rollout speeds of renewables and nuclear power compare?

Let’s compare the speed of per capita electricity generation growth in a few countries for renewables and nuclear. I’m guessing nobody will object if we use the German wunderkind as a top performing renewables example. We’ll plot the last 11 years of wind and solar growth, starting 12 months after the beginning of their feed-in-tariff scheme. We’ll also throw in the last 11 years of Chinese per capita electricity growth from all sources. This is just to put their coal/wind/nuclear/solar/hydro build in proper per capita context.

All of our comparison cases, except one, are historical. They aren’t plans, they are achievements. Anti-nuclear campaigners are fond of finding particular nuclear power stations with time or cost overruns to ‘prove’ how slow or expensive nuclear electricity is to roll out. Cherry picking examples is a time-honored strategy when objective argument fails.

The exception to my ‘runs on the board’ analysis is the United Arab Emirates. In 2009, the UAE notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that it wanted to join various international conventions related to nuclear electricity. The UAE spent a few years with the help of the IAEA fast tracking the establishment of suitable regulatory authorities, calling tenders and educating people. In 2012 Hyundai and Samsung started work on 4 x 1.4 gigawatt nuclear reactors which should be operational in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. The South Koreans build on time and within budget.

For the most part, the chart shows “Added electrical energy” per capita, not total electricity. The Chinese, Belgians and Swedes all had substantial electricity at the first year on the chart, but I’ve started them all at zero and just considered added per capita energy. But I’ve made some exceptions. Germany in 2001 did have a little wind and solar already, so I start the line at the appropriate point above zero. Similarly, for France in 1970, with nuclear. France in 1979 is just the continuation with a little overlap, so I haven’t restarted them at zero.

The UAE shows what a country with no nuclear could achieve given the political will. By 2020, about 12 years after notifying the IAEA, the Emirates will be getting 44 terawatt hours of power annually from its South Korean reactors. This is a per capita addition of some 3400 kwh/yr of clean electricity. It’s not enough, but as the chart shows, it’s nearly three-and-a-half times faster than the German wind and solar rollout.

As you can also see from the chart, if all goes well, the UAE will have added electricity faster with nuclear alone than the Chinese have done using all sources, including coal, during the past 11 years.

In contrast, the Australian rollout of one million solar photovoltaic installations has added just 127 kwh/yr per person (based on these figures) since whenever you decide to date the beginning. If I’d bothered to add it to the chart it would be an almost horizontal line at the bottom.

The UAE rollout speed is no fluke. Nuclear has runs on the board.

The French nuclear growth during the 70s was similar to Germany’s current wind and solar growth. By similar I mean only about twice as fast. But then during the 80s, they reaped the harvest of the nuclear projects begun in the 70s and added about 4700 kwh/yr per person between 1979 and 1990.

The Belgians did likewise. And the standout leader is Sweden, adding seven times the per capita electricity between 1976 and 1987 of the current German molasses miracle. Sweden is interesting for another reason. They use almost double the electricity per capita as the OECD average. A whopping 15,000 kwh/person/yr compared to the OECD average of about 8300 kwh/person/yr.

This is way more than we use in Australia (10,000 kwh/person/yr), but they only generate 25 gms of CO2 per kwh, so who gives a damn how much electricity they use? Swedish electricity is about 50:50 nuclear and hydro. Scale back their profligacy and they’ve got plenty to charge electric vehicles and so on.

With Germany, on the other hand, there is no plausible mechanism for solar or wind to achieve the steep nuclear growth levels seen in the chart. It is more likely that growth will slow as easy wind and solar sites are used and the government runs out of money. Wind power growth is already flattening and while solar is still growing strongly, there is no physical factor which could produce the huge rates of growth seen in the 1980s in France for nuclear electricity.

Germany’s renewable hopes over the coming decade are pinned on €550 billion worth of offshore wind farms, slated to give about 10 gigawatts of wind power by 2020. Assuming a 50 percent capacity factor, this is just a per capita bump of 530 kwh/yr over more than a decade. Glacial. And if offshore wind delivers 25 GW by 2030, this is a per capita increase of 1330 kwh/yr over about two decades. Molasses. This is not even close to matching UAE’s nuclear rollout and it comes at a massive cost.

But Germany’s glacial renewable revolution may not even hit molasses pace with the offshore wind farms being years behind schedule and facing all manner of technical hurdles.

Comparing financial costs is difficult and largely irrelevant in the context of the cost of climate level catastrophes, but however you do it, the UAE is paying a smallish fraction per terawatt hour compared to what Germany is paying for wind and solar. The total UAE cost is about $20 billion for construction and another $20 billion for running costs over about 60 years for 44 TWh/yr.

In comparison, for the 19 TWh/yr of installed solar PV at the end of 2011, Germany is committed to paying feed-in tariffs amounting to about $130 billion. In very rough terms, the UAE will pay half the price for double the energy for three times the lifespan.

I’d attempt some comparison with Australia’s renewable rollout, but we haven’t actually done anything except fail proudly and boast about it.

Back in 1989, Professor Martin Green of the University of New South Wales predicted solar PV would replace coal in 10 or 15 years. But all we have had is a consistent history of glacial failure. So while Australia continues to produce electricity at 850g of CO2 per kwh, and boast about our dismal one million rooftop solar systems, the French have been producing electricity with nuclear reactors for less than 80g of CO2 per kwh for over 20 years. The Germans are stuck at 450g of CO2 and still building more coal power stations.

Being cool, profitable, and popular is fine, but irrelevant. We need a reliable technology that delivers deep energy emission cuts and we need it fast.

It’s rapidly becoming crystal clear that the biggest enemy we face in preventing ongoing climate destabilistation is the anti-nuclear movement. They have cost the planet two decades which could otherwise have seen many more countries with clean electricity, and now they are running a distracting strategy promoting technologies which are intrinsically slow to roll out. They have, in effect, created an energy growth vacuum being filled by coal seam gas which is quick to build but which won’t prevent further climate destabilisation.

Geoff Russell is a mathematician and computer programmer, and a member of Animal Liberation SA. He has published a book on diet and science entitled CSIRO Perfidy. This post originally appeared at Business Spectator.

I know that you are correct, about nuclear energy. Unfortunately, virtually no one else does. To be openly pro-nuclear energy, one risks being treated as a pariah. I will continue to believe that nuclear energy is our best hope, despite Japan’s leaking reactor mess at the moment (and I do not for one moment imply any disrespect regarding their response to the tsunami in March 2011; they were not careless then, or now).

As for Germany, you are correct. I’ll tell you another way of gauging how non-functional their green energy program is. Have a look at Germany’s energy futures market, the domestic exchange. There is zero volume on most days. That is because it is not economic, as green-generated electricity is so heavily subsidized by the government. There is a lot of activity in electricity futures markets in other parts of the world though.

I don’t mean to sound unreasonably harsh. The U.S.A., my home, is guilty of much worse. All the initial research into solar energy and conversion panels was done here, in Arizona. Unfortunately, environmentalist, no, that isn’t correct, irrational misguided residents were so hostile to the idea of solar energy’s unsightly aspects that the world center for solar energy research relocated in Germany. Despite the climate, German citizens and energy researchers were much more receptive!

Irrational fears about nuclear and other fossil fuel alternatives will be the end of us. We’re running out of time. Coal is not the answer.

Nuclear power is back on Australia’s radar. In its recent issues paper released as a preface to September’s Energy White Paper, the Abbott government reopened the debate thus: With environmental considerations…

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The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases