A new study puts a price tag on the potentially devastating consequences of climate change in the Arctic:
Governments and industry have expected the widespread warming of the Arctic region in the past 20 years to be an economic boon, allowing the exploitation of new gas and oilfields and enabling shipping to travel faster between Europe and Asia. But the release of a single giant “pulse” of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the East Siberian sea “could come with a $60tn [trillion] global price tag”, according to the researchers who have for the first time quantified the effects on the global economy. …
[U]sing the Stern review, [the study authors] calculated that 80% of the extra impacts by value will occur in the poorer economies of Africa, Asia and South America.
“Inundation of low-lying areas, extreme heat stress, droughts and storms are all magnified by the extra methane emissions,” the authors write. They argue that global economic bodies have not taken into account the risks of rapid ice melt and that the only economic downside to the warming of the Arctic they have identified so far has been the possible risk of oil spills.
But, they say, economists are missing the big picture. “Neither the World Economic Forum nor the International Monetary Fund currently recognise the economic danger of Arctic change. [They must] pay much more attention to this invisible time-bomb. The impacts of just one [giant “pulse” of methane] approaches the $70-tn value of the world economy in 2012″, said Prof Gail Whiteman, at the Rotterdam School of Management and another author.
Atmospheric scientist James Samenow pushes back on the study, saying that “most everything known and published about methane indicates this scenario is very unlikely”:
And, here’s the kicker: Nature, the same organization which published Wednesday’s commentary, published a scientific review of methane hydrates and climate change by Carolyn Ruppel in 2011 which suggests the scenario in said commentary is virtually impossible.
Peter Wadhams, one of the study’s authors, rebuts Samenow. Recent Dish on climate change here, here, and here.
(Photo: US Geological Survey)
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