‘A failure of the developed nations to assist developing countries to manage the climate change challenge will almost certainly cause a further spike in north-south tensions.
2) Migration and immigration will rise, producing a strong backlash.
‘A profound increase in the movement of people will cause greater tensions and perhaps violent conflicts between and within countries over uncontrolled immigration issues.’
3) Public health problems will grow.
‘Climate change will also have profoundly negative consequences for global health, especially in poorer regions of the world.’
4) Resource conflicts and vulnerabilities will intensify.
‘Over the next three decades, climate change-exacerbated water scarcity could well contribute to instability in many regions of the world.’
‘Climate change could also affect the international politics of energy production and consumption.
5) Nuclear activity will increase, with attendant risks.
‘many developing countries will begin operating their own commercial nuclear reactors during the next few decades. This would increase the total number of nuclear reactors around the world, including those under the control of nations that may lack the experience to safely conduct these operation. The threat of global climate change also provides governments interested in acquiring nuclear weapons yet another justification to pursue nuclear-related research and nuclear technologies.’
6) Challenges to global governance will intensify.
‘the United Nations and other existing international institutions will have great difficulty managing the full range of adverse consequences. The implication of new international alignments driven by environmental factors are uncertain, but the complex and inherently divisive nature of climate change is likely to impede collective responses.
7) Domestic political repercussions and state failure will occur.
‘Political authorities unable to manage climate-induced challenges might well lose necessary public support. National leaders professing authoritarian ideologies could become more attractive if liberal democratic systems fail to marshal sufficient political will to manage the climate challenge. In some instances people might resort to violent means-especially when opportunities to change leaders through elections are circumscribed-to remove existing governments. In a few places people might turn to non-state actors, including religious movements or terrorist groups for comfort or to effect more dramatic change. Moreover, under conditions of severe global climate change, environmental factors may push already failed states deeper into the abyss of ungovernability, while driving other states toward the brink.’
8) The balance of power will shift in unpredictable ways.
‘Over the long term, the very divergent regional effects of climate change could affect the evolving global distribution of power with unpredictable consequences for international security.’
9) China’s role will be critical.
‘Many members of the international community are calling on Beijing to adopt more rigorous policies to limit the growth of China’s carbon emissions to reflect the country’s status as an emerging global stakeholder sharing the burdens of world leadership. Some of these appeals have been less than effective as China’s reasoning that the United States is not showing itself to be serious still holds. According to the World Bank, 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China.’
10) The United States must come to terms with climate change.
‘the unique character of the American people, with the depths of optimism and penchant for practicality, will be a major asset.’
If there is one thing to take away from this report, it is the need for a systems approach to the climate change solution. One cannot stress enough the pivotal role to be played by the United State within the world system of nations.
The report ends on a positive note:
‘While all those who collaborated in this study completed the process with a profound sense of urgency, we also collectively are encouraged that there is still time for the United States and the international community to plan an effective response to prevent, mitigate, and where possible adapt, to global climate change.’
To be tempered by Machiavelli’s cautionary wisdom, as quoted in the report’s preface:
“The Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do, who have to regard not only present troubles, but also future ones, for which they must prepare with every energy, because, when foreseen, it is easy to remedy them; but if you wait until they approach, the medicine is no longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for it happens in this, as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure. Thus it happens in affairs of state, for when the evil that arise have be3n foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them, there is no longer a remedy.”
For more on The Age of Consequences report, I suggest you go to Real Climate, and read David’s post there.
La Marguerite 
To anyone intersted in stopping global warming without producing societal collapse.
A means to produce electric power from energy in the atmosphere has beein invented and patented by Louis M. Michaud, P.Eng of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.
The cost of said electricity is projected to be just a fraction of its current cost from today’s coal plants.
Mr. Michaud’s Atmospheric Vortex Engine emits no green-house gases. A low-cost version without turbo-generators can actually cool the planet by inverting the position of warmed surface air with the air above it. This allows excess heat to be radiated more quicly to space by the T^4 rule. Intense deployment of this device could start to cool the planet eventually, allowing CO2 to more readily dissolve in the oceans.
Obviously, it will take decades to build enough of them to do this. Meanwhile, we can at least start to replace our coal plants with this device and obey the first low of holes–when you’re getting in too deep–stop digging.
visit http://www.vortexengine.ca for more details.
AVE_fan
Thanks Jerry. Looks like an interesting technology!
lamarguerite,
I encourage you to contact Mr. Michaud personally to discuss (in French) his invention. He has been working on it for decades and has nine peer-reviewed articles relating to it in the literature.
He has written a summary in French which you should read, and and one of the endorsements is also written in French. You should also read the “in the news” links,, including one in the Toronto Star last July.
My second language is Spanish so I wrote the “Resumen” in that language.
If this works, all the discussion on realclimate wrt AGW will be moot.
Merci,
Jerry (aka AVE_fan)
That IS an interesting technology, Jerry. Bravo. I hope it catches on.
The Age of Consequences report is very important. I cannot download it so I have not read, but from the summary, I see there are three scenarios. One is so, one is pretty bad, and the last one presents a kind of Max Max future scenario.
So I wonder why so very few people have commented on my polar cities concept and blog, and why the mainstream media refuses to discuss my project. The committee that put together the AOC report said it might come to this, the Mad Max part, and my polar cities idea is to plan so that future generations can live a good positive happy life in polar cities until they can come down to middle regions again. Why is everyone ignoring me? Whenever I post, here or there or anywhere, people just read right on by me, and nobody ever replies to my emails. Hmmmm.
SMILE.
My goal for 2008 is a major story in the mainstream media about polar cities. If not CNN, then the BBC, if not the Washington Post, then the N Y Times. If not AP, then Reuters. If not dpa, then AFP. Somebody somewhere has got to listen to me, just once. It can’t hoit, as they say in Brooklyn.
Nobody is going to power their cities with a tornado in a box. Nor is anyone going to build cities at the poles.
Nor will we have flying cars powered by hydrogen, nor yet solar panels on every house based on chlorophyll, still less fusion reactors.
What we’ll do is use existing technology and existing cities. We may use bad existing technology (eg coal-fired generation of electricity), or we may use good existing technology (eg wind turbines). But we’ll use existing technology, because the timeframe in which we have to act is the next 25 years or so, whereas new technologies take 50 years or so to become widespread.
Steam engines were invented in the 1750s, railways in the 1810s, the telegraph in the 1850s, the telephone in the 1890s, the electronic computer in the 1930s, the personal computer in the 1950s, the mobile phone in the 1940s, solar photovolatic cells in the 1950s, and so on and so forth. All of them took about 50 years from invention to really making any difference in most people’s lives.
We don’t have 50 years. So we have to work with what’s already commercially-proven, and shown to work practically-speaking.
So even if the technologies and methods are as wonderful as you say, there simply isn’t time for them to spread.
No new wonder technology or approach of Science! or the Market! is going to come like the Messiah to save us. What will save us from ourselves is existing technology combined with a lot of hard work putting it into place.
Kyle, as always, I applaud your clear thinking. Your comment made me think of my husband whose approach, not unlike yours is, lets roll up our sleeves, and start doing things. For him that means, solar panels for sewage treatment plants.
As you have outlined so well in much of your writings, the quest for elusive new technologies should not prevent us from doing what we can with existing means. Lots can be done with what we already have. So lets just do it. Where you and I may differ, is on the emphasis I place on the role of policies, and making sure the right leader (for America) gets elected. Unlike you, I am not so optimistic on the people’s ability to mobilize themselves to make the necessary changes.
Kyle,
With all due respect to Danny Bloom, his designs for polar cities 500 years from now, and the relative immediacy of the extraction of energy from from the troposphere via the AVE are two completely different animals. Nor is a “flying car”, powered by hydrogen in the same category. Carelessly grouping the AVE together with these is an attempt to prove guilt by association, and is only one example of your muddled thinking with regard to this technology.
Before proceeding any further with the discussion, Kyle, which is it?– in your opinion–that a “tethered tornado will “never” power a city, or that we can’t build enough of them in time to make a difference?
Lamarguerite–how sure are you that the AVE based technology is “elusive”? Have you done your homework as I suggested, or contacted Prof. Nilton Renno of the University of Michigan to get his opinion on how much potential the technology has. IMO you’re being entirely too dissmissive for something with the potential to turn this global warming issue around. OTOH, maybe it’s OK with you that your blog is just another in the pile of mediocre alternative energy blogs that are so fuzzy that they contribute absolutely nothing to getting us headed in the right direction.
I would like to point out that the AVE is decidedly a “low-tech” device, not requiring the development of some exotic technology–it basically uses windmills to generate power. A demonstration plant of sufficient size is built at a good location. If it works–bingo, if not, you forget about it and move on to something else. No “learning curve” involved.
Jerry,
I am not saying the technology you are suggesting should be ignored. I am just supporting Kyle in his assertion that there is much we can do with what we already have, and until other technologies are proven and ready to be implemented, that is where we should focus. There are two parallel tracks here, the development of new technologies, and the management of all existing resources. This, not being a technology blog, in general, I tend to focus on the non technology end of things.
I appreciate your passion for pushing this new technology however. There are many blogs devoted to the subject of clean tech. May I suggest you use them as forums for AVE?
We’re not living like the Jetsons yet, but today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality. The milestones of technology Kyle mentions are like rungs on a ladder reaching to the plateau we now exist on, where computer processing, quantum mechanics, superconductors, and other new-age disciplines have made the learning curve exponential, and rapid advances the norm. In Germany, there actually are solar panels on every house, and whether they are based on chlorophyll seems immaterial. There is also an international fusion reactor project that will have meaningful output within ten years.
Existing technology will be used, but the state of the art that exists in 25 years will render all arguments that assume static progression obsolete. I agree that all efficient low-tech energy systems should be explored, including solar thermal, pumped hydro, and Stirling heat engines.
J.D., thanks for reminding us about the power of technological progress!