UN Information Sheet 15: Infrastructure, industry, and human settlements
This information sheet claims that climate change - which in this document always means CO2-induced global warming - "will have" a number of negative effects on humanity's physical assets. It begins by highlighting industry, energy, and transport infrastructure; but in the very next bullet point, it admits that "the climate sensitivity of the industry, energy and transportation sectors is relatively low compared to that of agriculture and natural ecosystems." Consequently, since we have shown in our evaluations of several earlier information sheets that both agricultural and natural ecosystems will likely fare even better in a higher-CO2 world than they do today, these major components of our civilization's infrastructure should have little to fear from the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content.
Back to UN Climate Change Information Kit Directory
This information sheet claims that climate change - which in this document always means CO2-induced global warming - "will have" a number of negative effects on humanity's physical assets. It begins by highlighting industry, energy, and transport infrastructure; but in the very next bullet point, it admits that "the climate sensitivity of the industry, energy and transportation sectors is relatively low compared to that of agriculture and natural ecosystems." Consequently, since we have shown in our evaluations of several earlier information sheets that both agricultural and natural ecosystems will likely fare even better in a higher-CO2 world than they do today, these major components of our civilization's infrastructure should have little to fear from the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content.
This information sheet also talks about an acceleration of rural-to-urban migration "in response to chronic crop failures, regional flooding, or drought." Again, as we have pointed out so many times, crops should do much better in a world of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration than they do currently. And what is this: flooding or drought? Whatever happens with respect to precipitation - whether it increases or decreases - the authors of this document seem bound and determined to attribute it to rising levels of atmospheric CO2, stating that both flooding and drought will occur as a result, and claiming that all consequences of either trend are bad.