CLIMATE INACTION IS SUICIDAL - A new report. Irreversible impacts if we do nothing.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/02/3587485/climate-panel-final-plea/

Continued inaction (right figure) results in catastrophic and irreversible levels of warming, 9°F over much of U.S. and world.

The world’s top scientists and governments have issued their bluntest plea yet to the world: Slash carbon pollution now (at a very low cost) or risk “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.” Scientists have “high confidence” these devastating impacts occur “even with adaptation” — if we keep doing little or nothing.

On Sunday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the “synthesis” report of their fifth full scientific climate assessment since 1990. More than 100 governments have signed off line by line on this review of more than 30,000 studies on climate science, impacts, and solutions.

Translation: The cost of even the most aggressive action — the kind needed to stave off irreversible disaster — is so low that it would not noticeably change the growth curve of the world economy this century. With high confidence, we would be reducing annual consumption growth from, say, 2.4 percent per year down to “only” a growth level of 2.34 percent per year.
How bad can it get if we won’t devote that tiny fraction of the world’s wealth to action? The IPCC already explained that in the science report from last fall (see “Alarming IPCC Prognosis: 9°F Warming For U.S., Faster Sea Rise, More Extreme Weather, Permafrost Collapse”). And they expanded on that in the impacts report (see “Climate Panel Warns World Faces ‘Breakdown Of Food Systems’ And More Violent Conflict”).