EU’s grim climate change warning

A dire set of predictions of the consequences of global warming in Europe is contained in a report for the European Commission. It forecasts that by 2071 climate change will cause droughts and floods that will kill 90,000 people a year while damage from rising sea levels will cost tens of billions of euros.

The Commission will endorse the report next week and use it to back its case for action to limit the rise in the world’s average temperature to 2 degrees centigrade above 1990 levels. Ironically, those countries most committed to combating climate change, such as the UK and Sweden, would gain, with warmer temperatures bringing bigger crop yields and fewer deaths from cold.

Those around the Mediterranean who have been slow to act to curb greenhouse gas emissions, such as Italy and Spain, would suffer most from “drought, reduced soil fertility, fire and other climate-change driven factors,” according to the study, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

The report, which draws on existing material and new information from the Commission’s Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security satellite mapping project, posits two scenarios. One envisages a 2.2 degree temperature rise, the other a 3 degree rise.

Crop yields would rise by up to 70 per cent in northern Europe but fall by up to a fifth in the south, depending on the temperature increase.

from the Financial Tiems of London