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	New report on climate change projects tens of millions more malnourished children by 2050 by International Food Policy Research Institute   Oct. 2009   At least twenty five million more children will be starving by 2050 due to effects of climate change, according to a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The study, the most comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on agriculture to date, compares the number of malnourished children in 2050 with and without climate change.   “This outcome could be averted with seven billion U.S. dollars per year of additional investments in agricultural productivity to help farmers to adapt to the effects of climate change. Investments are needed in agricultural research, improved irrigation, and rural roads to increase market access for poor farmers. Access to safe drinking water and education for girls is also essential,” said Gerald Nelson, IFPRI senior research fellow and report lead author.   The study, “Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation,” was prepared by IFPRI for inclusion in two separate reports from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, both released today in conjunction with international climate change meetings in Bangkok.   Without new technology and adjustments by farmers, climate change will reduce irrigated wheat yields in 2050 by around 30 percent in developing countries compared to a no-climate change scenario. Irrigated rice yields will fall by 15 percent.   Even without climate change, food prices will rise, but climate change makes the problems much worse. Without climate change, 2050 wheat prices will increase globally by almost 40 percent. With climate change, wheat prices will increase by 170 – 194 percent. Rice is projected to increase 60 percent without climate change, but it will go up 113 – 121 percent with climate change. 2050 maize prices will be more than 60 percent higher without climate change, but they will be 148 – 153 percent higher with climate change.   The study combined climate models that project changes in rainfall and temperature and a crop model to capture biophysical effects with IFPRI’s economic model of world agriculture.   The modeling does not include: the effects of increased variability in weather due to climate change; the loss of agricultural lands due to rising sea levels; climate change-induced increases in pests and diseases; increased variability in river flow as glaciers melt. All these factors would increase the damage of climate change to agriculture.   Developing countries will be hit hardest by climate change and will face much bigger declines in crop yields and production than industrialized countries, the study finds. The negative effects of climate change are especially pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Compared to the average biophysical effects of climate change on yields in the industrialized world, the developing countries fare worse for almost all crops.   “Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change, because farming is so weather-dependent. Small-scale farmers in developing countries will suffer the most,” noted Mark Rosegrant, director of IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division and report co-author. “However, our study finds that this scenario of lower yields, higher prices, and increased child malnutrition can be alleviated.”   In addition to increased funding for rural development, IFPRI recommends more open agricultural trade to ensure that food will reach the poorest populations in times of crises. “If governments and donors begin now to invest seriously in adaptation for poor farmers, we can significantly impact this bleak future,” said Rosegrant. Visit the related web page
	Four Degrees of Devastation by Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service   Oct 2009   The prospect of a four-degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures in 50 years is alarming - but not alarmist, climate scientists now believe.   "Two degrees C is already gone as a target," said Chris West of the University of Oxford"s UK Climate Impacts Programme. "Four degrees C is definitely possible. This is the biggest challenge in our history," West told participants at the "4 Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science Conference" at the University of Oxford last week. A four-degree C overall increase means a world where temperatures will be two degrees warmer in some places, 12 degrees and more in others, making them uninhabitable.   It is a world with a 1-2 metre sea level rise by 2100, leaving hundreds of millions homeless. This will head to 12 metres in the coming centuries as the Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets melt, according to papers presented at the conference in Oxford.   Four degrees of warming would be hotter than any time in the last 30 million years, and it could happen as soon as 2060.   "Political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it"s completely useless," John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the conference.   Schellnhuber recently briefed U.S. officials from the Obama administration. He had told them that the U.S. must reduce its emissions from its current 20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero tonnes per person by 2020 to have an even chance of stabilising the climate around two degrees.   China"s emissions must peak by 2020 and then go to zero by 2035 based on the current science, he added.   "Policymakers who agreed to a two-degree C goal at the G20 summit easily fool themselves about what emission cuts are needed," Schellnhuber said.   Even with a two-degree rise, most of the world"s coral reefs will be lost, large portions of the ocean will become dead zones, mountain glaciers will largely vanish and many ecosystems will be at risk, Schellnhuber warned. And there is the risk of reaching a tipping point where the warming rapidly accelerates.   With 2008 emissions at the very top end of the IPCC"s worst case estimates, it is time to look at what that may mean for the planet, said Richard Betts of the Climate Impacts research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre in London.   Continuing on the current high emissions path means average global temperatures would increase by 4.0 to 5.6 degrees by 2090. Brazil, much of Canada, parts of the U.S., Siberia and Central Europe would be eight degrees warmer than in the past 50 years, computer models show. Rainfall in the north will increase but wet tropics will become 20 percent drier.   The models are based on human emissions alone, and do not include heat-amplifying feedbacks from melting ice or changes in carbon sinks. When those are factored in, it moves the timetable forward so that "reaching four degrees by 2060 is a plausible, worst-case scenario". By 2100, 5.5 degrees is possible, he said.   Few places would experience the global average temperature, Betts cautioned, noting that the computer models show the Arctic warming 15 degrees while many other regions of the world would experience 10 degrees of additional warming.   These scenarios do not include potential tipping points like the release of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon in northern permafrost or the melting of undersea methane hydrates.   What would the world look like when it is four degrees warmer? It will likely mean up to two billion people not having access to adequate fresh water because of the major shift in rainfall patterns, said Nigel Arnell, director of the Walker Institute for Climate Systems Research at the University of Reading in Britain.   Up to 15 percent of existing or potential cropland - and 40 percent in Africa - will become too dry and too hot for food production.   Flooding will affect at least 500 million people because sea levels will rise more than one metre by 2100.   Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf from Germany"s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research projects sea level rise by 1.2 to 1.9 metres from 1990 levels by 2100. Rahmstorf says "we"re expecting a really big sea level rise in the longer run," he said.   Even at two or three degrees of warming, sea level will inevitably rise many metres higher in the centuries to come. The main questions are how fast levels will increase, and whether vulnerable countries like Holland can build seawalls fast enough to keep up with the rising water levels and the extraordinary costs involved, he said.   In a four-degree warmer world, adaptation means "put your feet up and die" for many people in the world, Oxford"s Chris West said bluntly. "In accepting the many alarming impacts, we see that it (a four-degree C increase) is not acceptable."   The climate negotiators heading to Copenhagen in December must accept the fact that the world"s carbon emissions must eventually stop - and stop completely. There is no sustainable per capita carbon emission level because it is the total amount of carbon emitted that counts, explains Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford"s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department.   Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many centuries, which makes it the most important greenhouse gas to reduce and eliminate. The current focus on CO2 concentrations like 450 ppm or 350 ppm is the not the right approach since it is the total cumulative emissions that determine how warm the planet will get, Allen told the conference.   If climate negotiators only look at slowing rates of carbon emissions, then natural gas will be substituted for coal because it has half of the carbon - but the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere will continue to increase. "We didn"t save the ozone layer by rationing deodorants," said Allen. Visit the related web page
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