now a couple of papers published warning us we're moving out and moving into a new period, a new climatic period calling the antropocene. and there's a lot of talk about that we're on a course, what would it look like? and what it looks like depends largely on what we do over the next few years to curb our carbon emissions. but clearly we're moving out of the paradigm that we've enjoyed for 11,000 years into a new t e time, condition on the planet. what does that place look like? obviously none of us know for certain, but there are some things we can say about that. for example, there was a recent paper published that suggested a 2-degree rise -- 2 degrees celsius rise in temperature would trigger -- and it's already triggering a melt of greenland, and that greenland melt will continue. it will largely be unstoppable

if the temperature goes over 2 degrees. it will be a predictable slow melt of greenland. and so if you think about greenland being this massive hunk of ice sitting on an island, currently dumping about 100 billion tons of ice into the ocean. if you go back a couple decades, greenland produced no net water flow to the ocean. so we've already seen a very dramatic shift in the amount of water coming off of greenland. and that water does a lot of things. it cools the surface temperatures of the gulf stream, it tends to ride on a lens on top of the warmer salt water. and has potentials as has been warned in the past to change, alter, the conditions particularly in europe and elsewhere. but nonetheless, greenland will be locked into a steady melt if we go over that 2-degree sea.

and i should tell you that a scientific team that's working on picking all the promises of all the governments to address climate change and putting them into the ippc model. and looks like we're going to about 2.3 degrees warming by 2040. so we're going to tip over that 2-degree mark with all of our promises. even though we are not going to live up to our promises. if you assume we are, we're still headed to a very dramatic shift that will have enormous impact on greenland. and, you know, what happens in greenland does not stay in greenland. >> we will add sea level rise. a 1-meter shift will displace 100 million people on the planet who are living in these mega deltas, living on islands, in coastal areas. these people will be pushed out of their place. and they will have to go somewhere. they will have to find a new place to live, to produce their food and that's particularly

critical in places like egypt where the now delta is already in serious trouble because the dam. and so as the sea level rises, there's going to be places like that. coastal louisiana is another place where we're going to see very severe shifts as a result of these melting conditions. storm intensities will increase. i'll leave that to others to talk about. but clearly, what we're going to see is as we raise the temperature already about 1 degree celsius, we've seen a 4% increase in moisture over the ocean. and that additional moisture causes additional storm events and has had a profound impact to date already, i believe, if you look, step back and look at the overall data. we're also seeing drop in deserts. already entering into this changing period, we have about 2% less aridable land today.

we're going from 7 billion people to 9 billion people. we have more mouths to feed in a climate that's shifting quite dramatically. we also are adding acid to the ocean. part of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rains out as carbonic acid. and that's accumulating in the ocean. it interferes with calcium uptake. and i should tell you the oceans have about a 30% increase in carbonic acid. so we're shifting the acidity in the ocean that will interfere fear with all life in the ocean because it all requires calcium uptake. the more acidic the water, the more calcium it can take up. if you're a shellfish or fin fish or even a plankton, it makes life more difficult because you're going to have a harder time collecting the calcium you need. and we're seeing that already. the fito plankton is down 40%. and that may not matter to some,

but that's a great engine of our oxygen production. about 50% to 70% of our oxygen on the planet is derived from the oceans, primarily plankton. we're messing with primary systems of the planet as we shift our behavior in the direction of more carbon. and i want to add this to the conversation, and that is that if you add up everything that everybody's doing on the planet to deal with climate change, we're actually turning the temperature up. so if you have a pot at home boiling over on the stove, who would run over and turn the temperature up? >> that's what our politicians are doing. turning up the temperature. it's not an energy policy, it's a political statement. and we've got to change the nature of our energy policies today in order to protect our children tomorrow. there are things we could do in terms of adaption. but clearly we're headed for trouble.

and wildlife are in the front line of damage, the models suggest we'll lose somewhere between 17% and 37% of the species if the temperature goes up over 2 degrees. if it goes much higher than that, we're going to see 40% to 70% of the species on the planet. the notion that we can just throw other species off the planet and still survive as a species ourself is insane. and yet that's the direction we're going as we continue to put carbon in the sky. a couple years ago, my daughter had asked me to come in the delivery room to watch her bring a new baby into this world. and she said, dad, i want you to cut the umbilical cord. and so i'm in this delivery room watching my daughter deliver her first child. the little guy come out and the doctor handed me the scissors. i have to admit, i was just deeply moved at the moment for

seeing my new grandchild for the first time. but also i knew i had an obligation for that little guy's future. and i -- and i wanted to rededicate myself to that future. i made a promise to that little guy i would continue to fight this battle for his future. and i must have been taking too much time because the doctor said finally, are you going to do this or what? but i really believe that this is a moral issue. it's no longer an issue of science. the science is dead on. it's clear, the scientists have warned us. and as we move forward down this road, we're seeing the science that scientists have warned us about. the changes in our ocean, the changes in our forest as trees die off. we're seeing these very dramatic shifts in nature. and it's up to us to change the outcome of this important issue. for our children's future. thank you.

>> next up, we'll hear from our national laboratory. >> good morning. thanks for showing up. i'm going to follow -- it's great i get to follow larry on this one. i'm going to spend a lot of time talking to you -- i think what the scholarly community refers to as vulnerability associated with climate change. i'm not going to talk about mitigating climate change. i think there's lots we need to do, we're not we, the people, as a nation, are not doing everything we could be doing. but i spent a lot of time at the panel yesterday talking about that. unless it comes up in q & a, i'm not going to talk about that. but i care about that, as well, and have a lot to say, many thoughts on that. what i do want to talk about again is what's likely to happen, right? the temperature's going up. it's going to go up even if we

have a complete -- because we've put enough to make the temperature rise occur. i think what we have to do is think about what does that mean? and are there things we could do to reduce the vulnerabilities of the planet and the human beings on the planet. and the take home for me is really, you know, given the change is going to happen. and we have some idea of what the changes are going to be, but certainly some uncertainty and how significant those changes are going to be. in my view, the most important thing to realize is that as the most significant impacts are going to happen in the developing world, okay? so as we -- as a world, seek to those developing nations seek to attain a quality of life that we in the developed world generally experience, which i think is one of their aims. i think we have to think about

helping them when they get there in a sustainable way. and that sustainable mechanism, they'll build and strengthen their adaptive capacity to respond to the changes in the climate that are undoubtedly coming, whatever they are. because some are coming and some of them are going to be very, very, very serious. let me kind of go through a brief outline of some of those changes. to give you a flavor. i amplify a couple of them and defer on a couple of others to my subsequent panelists here. so we can expect significant changes in river flows all over the globe. 10, 20, 30, 40% changes in river flows. in the northern areas and tropical kind of -- in the latitudes with plenty of rain. in areas that are typically dry, like here, western united states.

it'll be seasonally affected. most importantly, the resilience of many ecosystems on the planet are likely to be exceeded this century. right an ecosystem has an adaptive capacity. if there's an external change on an ecosystem, and it's a modest change, the ecosystem can fairly easily adapt to it. subtle changes occur. they are significant to perhaps a particular species. but in aggregate the ecosystem is fine if the change is moderate. but it's almost certain this century the adaptive capacity and the resilience of many ecosystems will be exceeded. that's probably what you would call a tipping point as you see in the popular literature, the popular press. so we're likely to hit some of them, when? i don't know, but almost certainly we're going to hit some and we'll have very significant probably disastrous consequences for those ecosystems. so what's interesting about

that, over the -- before mid century, net carbon uptake by terrestrial ecosystems, not necessarily the ocean, but by those on the land are likely to increase, but peak by mid century. then they're going to turn around, that's what the best science tells us. so that means after mid century those ecosystems are going to start releasing carbon or at least reducing their uptake of carbon. this will amplify the change that we're driving going forward. so we're going to see by mid century, frankly, fairly relative to what we're going to see in the latter half of the century, what we're going to see in the first half is going to be fairly moderate. the bad stuff comes later. that's what that point says to you. that's the best likelihood. interestingly enough, the potential for food production is projected to increase. that's probably a good thing. there are a lot of people on the planet that don't have enough.

to my mind, i actually kind of searched for a positive because i don't want to always be a downer. and that's it, that's the positive you're going to hear from me. i know, it doesn't really -- it pales in comparison to the negatives. i agree with that completely. but there's one positive about food production. coastal areas and small islands will be exposed to increased risks. the megadeltas in asia and africa are especially vulnerable. especially specific to my point that we, in the united states and canada, north america broadly and we in the developed world are not going to be impacted directly that much. the real impacts, the most significant impacts are going to happen in these areas because mega deltas in asia and africa. those societies don't have much adaptive capacity. we can contemplate as it is, and i'm sure you're aware of this, contemplation to build bigger dams and bigger dikes. and they can, indeed, that's a

great mitigation strategy, i guess it's an adaption strategy. and it's -- and those nations, that nation and others like it including ours have the capacity to actually execute a plan like that if we choose to. well, you know, bangladesh, it doesn't have that anymore, all right. they lack that adaptive capacity. so they're in deep, the future looks much bleaker for those nations that lack that adaptive capacity. so building that capacity is really, really important. health impacts will vary from one location to another, and you'll hear from my subsequent speaker more about the health effects of health impacts of climate change. i'm not going to say anything more about that. but let me emphasize really the final comments, future vulnerability really depends, not just on how much the climate change is because i guess at this point, you know, we're not -- it's going to change, a question of how much. that's in our hands. but also the development pathway that especially that at-risk

peoples of the world take. and we can have a big role in that, as well. and i think as we -- a very important connection between sustainable development and the vulnerabilities to the peoples of the world to climate change. so that's the final thing i want to leave you with and with that, we can take questions later and i'll pass it on to my fellow panelists. thank you very much. >> thank you, doug. next up is dan ferver. >> thanks for coming out this morning to hear about this critical, critical issue. and i -- and larry and doug both have sketched out a very clear view of the bigger picture and i want to give you some specifics. and the name of this panel is a new paradigm. so i thought about throwing in

some aspects that are not familiar to a lot of people. so talking about projections going forward. we just heard about some of these projections. i worked extensively over the last few years with a scientist in a position named paul epstein who was associate director of the center for health and global environment. we wrote a book together on this that was mentioned. and so one of the things that he did -- one of the projects he and his center did about a few years back is put together a large multidisciplinary team of experts and make projection about snare ycenario planning. you can't, you know, have a mathematical model, computer model, figure out what's going to happen. you can still create scenarios. and using the best educated guess of the top expert.

and that's what they did. and they came up with two possible scenarios. what happened if climate change moves forward at that time. based on the best information from the ippc and others. so in the milder scenario, glaciers would retreat, the more extreme weather and disasters, permafrost melt, gradually swamping coastal areas, things we've heard about, water supplies on the coast and islands. fresh water is harder to come by. it's harder to grow food in those areas. coral reefs are damaged, perhaps to the point of extinction of the eco system, perhaps not because they have lasted a long time, hundreds of millions of years, through a lot of climate changes. that was a milder scenario. economically, it just -- major economic effects. the more severe scenario is the sort of thing that doug was just

talking about where eco systems cause tipping points and flip. and in that case, you get -- some of the things actually we're seeing. some of the drought and pests and forests, we're seeing that out here in this part of the country with bark beetles and, of course, new trees will grow, but major changes in eco systems and changes as far as from carbon things to sources in some areas. more severe storms. so you expect more katrinas. as oceans acidify, more disease, we'll talk more about that in a minute. so that actually is not the worst possible scenario. the worst possible scenario is something that most people don't think about which is the possibility of an abrupt climate change. so we know how climate has behaved over 800,000 years or so

from analysis of basically of air bubbles trapped in ice cores in greenland. they're like tree cores, you look at every layer and look at the air. and using the ratio of oxygen isotopes, you can figure out the temperature when the ice formed. we have orders of inching climates. and what that's shown over the past 15, 20 years is that climate has -- we're in a very unusual period right now because it's stable. over more typical is up and down up and down and a little bit of stability. so we're talking about changes could be on the order of 10, 20 degrees fahrenheit average global temperature could be as quickly as a decade or as quickly as three years. so these things have happened. they happen -- the last one was about 12,500 years ago as we were coming out of the last ice age. so what is -- what happens if we do get something like that? so in our book, we talked about

an analysis that was done by some consultants for the pentagon. this is a very detailed analysis based on a national academy report and based on extensive interviewing with scientists a few years back. but this is what they came up with. they worked that scenario of more fresh water off greenland, that changed the climate particularly in europe and the east coast and north america, but so here's what they found. they -- the scenario was warming then sudden chilling of europe, north america, and asia. they found the southwest was drier and farming was hit hard. the south u.s. was drier. europe got a lot colder, the climate in northern areas was like siberia. people started moving south from scandinavia because it was too cold to live there. cop yields globally about 10% to 20%. there was massive famine in china because of the decreased crop yield. in this scenario.

remember, this is for pentagon planning. they're giving them the best guess is that best educated guess as of a few years ago. u.s. has to secure borders because to keep out starving immigrants, the -- basically aggressive wars will be fought over resources. this would be the worst-case scenario. and the global economy suffers on the realm of, you know, 1930s depression. or worse. so basically the world becomes resource haves and have notes and that's what the world would become under that abrupt climate change scenario. now, is that going to happen? nobody knows. the science is not there to predict to whether the climate will shift abruptly. but in complex systems, complemecomplex systems can undergo tipping points. so if you have a top that's spinning and kind of wobbles a lot more before it falls down. if you're riding a bicycle, it wobbles before you fall. those sorts of things.

so what are the signs that our climate system is wobbling? extreme weather. so extreme weather is happening. and there's been a -- last year, for example, 60% of the united states experienced some extreme weather. the drought in texas, extreme wet conditions from indiana to vermont, terrible flooding in vermont, on and on. and that 60% was the highest amount, highest area covered ever in any given year of areas that experienced extreme weather. how does that play out? it's part of living in this climate paradigm? well, the number of billion dollar insurance disasters has skyrocketed since 1980 from 2 to 14 and so global reinsurance companies are really feeling the pain of this. because they insure when there's a run of claims that could bankrupt an ordinary insurance company. the reinsurance company back it up. just to move on. so we don't know if climate is

going to flip. but there's some pretty scary things happening that, okay, climates are stable. but the good news is, the unstable systems can restabilize. and so we -- we don't want to be pushing the system any further. in our book, we use an analogy by a climate scientist. and what he said is we're -- we are -- what we're doing to the climate is basically like poking an angry beast with a stick. and we need to stop doing that. so -- here is how it could play out. our book was primarily about the human health effects. how this would play out in health. extreme weather, dangerous heat waves. heat waves are the most dangerous type of disaster. even though we do have ways of dealing with it, the 2003 european heat wave killed 250 people, the 2010 heat wave killed about 50,000 people, also

affected agriculture in the area. climate model, the regional climate modelling and the national climate modelling says if we don't cut radically back on greenhouse gas emissions, heat wave, something like chicago in 1995 which is the most famous bad heat wave in this country and 750 people were killed in that heat wave. that could happen every other year by the 2040s, every year by the 2040s, a lot more than the united states. and a heat wave like europe 2003 could happen every other year. that's what the climate modelling is. and you have infectious diseases, expanding the range where insects can carry infectious diseases. moving higher in the mountains. ticks are moving further up into new england and canada. you have asthma and allergies, the higher carbon dioxide levels have triggered ragweed to pump out a lot more pollen, twice the pollen according to some science. and the pollen is more potent. so that -- you know, you hear many parts of the country, more

people are having allergies, maybe there's a reason for that. and there is some recent science saying there is. extreme weather. so trees and crops and, you know, the crop -- the crop -- the agriculture scenario. i love the good news, but there's also complications. in terms of rise in temperature would also increase the range of crop pests and more heat wave and drought and extreme weather affects crop deals and there's more too. you know, there's a lot of concern to how this is going to affect us. this is -- this is not about polar bears, this is about people. so i'll close on that note and we'll take more questions later. >> thanks, dan.

our last panelist, in addition to mediating global conflicts all over the planet, she has some street cred closer to home. she was the first -- one of the delegates to the first solar energy conference ever held just down the road in goldman. so -- >> thank you. that's because i've been around a long time. i have a bunch of notes here, but i'm not going to use them. i asked to go last because i had a feeling i was going to be listening to wonderful experts on a very distopian future. and i'd like to respond with the potential for some good news. we have to balance what we know is happening scientifically. so that's what i want to talk about. and i made some notes while the guys were talking. as i said, i'm throwing out what i was going to say.

but i do want to pick up on some of the important things that my distinguished panel had to say. larry started off by saying there are dramatic shifts in nature. and he mentioned that also we have to change our energy policies. our organization which is an organization that is applying complex adaptive system science which is very hard science to how to transform the negotiations and the diplomacy around the issues in the world that are completely stuck, that are completely at impasse. and we go immediately in these negotiations to what i call the systems level, the whole systems level. so, for example, it isn't enough just to change energy policy. if we just keep looking there,

we're going to miss the fact that we have to shift the way we as human beings identify ourselves in the universe. we have to start -- we have to start acting like nature. that's what we have to do. i'm a big fan of a book written about 12 years ago. i'm sure you all know janeane's work. "biomimicry" is the fact that we as human beings have been separated for so long from nature. we are humans, nature is out there. and that we have to end that separation and so it's going to require a complete shift in our mental models. we don't have a paradigm shift yet in terms of global climate change. there's a shift going on in nature, but the shift has not

happened in our brain. and in our world views and the way we think about this. i have come to this conference last week i was at the united nations facilitating on behalf of the prime minister buton. how many you know where buton is? this is a system level possibility for change. because if we measure how humans develop, or how we progress in a new way, then perhaps it will begin to change our world view and our mental models. when you can measure something, it becomes real. now, we only measure human development now as we know in terms of economic development. that's how we measure progress. and until we stop doing that, and until