The IPCC report was written by three working groups, with hundreds of lead authors. Van den Hurk, who was part of working group 1 (climate; 234 authors), was surprised by the enormous impact the report had. "In 2014, that wasn't the case." Then the report showed a continuation of climate change and it became increasingly likely that the climate was actually changing due to human action, but that is really different now: "Science has made a lot of strides in the last seven years. The doubt about the human contribution has disappeared. And we are now able to look at developments in much more regional detail. In response to this, we see that policy is being made everywhere." For example, he points to ABP's recent move to exit fossil investments. "That's the return on the report. It gets society moving."
In summary, the report shows the consequences of a cumulative effect: a build-up of the CO2 concentration due to emissions since the industrial revolution causes a higher temperature worldwide. The higher the emissions, the more the target (to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees) disappears from view. In every region of the world, the temperature on hot days is now higher than at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition, extreme precipitation is increasing in many regions, and the world average precipitation is rising. For the drought areas, the following applies: there is significantly less soil moisture and it is drier in the warm season than it was 100 years ago. And then, according to Van den Hurk, we are only talking about a degree increase. "The extreme heat that is only once every ten years around 1900 with 1.1 degrees higher temperature three times as likely. With an even higher warming, it even occurs every year. And it goes on and on: every degree counts!."
Also for sea level rise, the question is not whether it will rise, but by how much. "If we were to completely stop reducing CO2 emissions now, the sea level would continue to rise for centuries, possibly even 3 meters in a few hundred years. So regardless of how successful we are in limiting the rise in temperature, we need to prepare for change anyway. In other words, sea level rise isn't stopping, but the timing is critical to the preparations we need to make."
Van den Hurk points to the ice caps. "The big ice sheets are mountains in colossal amounts of water, and we don't really know how fragile they are, it's a bit mysterious. The ice shelves that float around it melt both at the bottom and at the top, but hold back much of the land ice. If that ice mass starts to move, it will no longer come to a standstill: if everything goes wrong, the sea level may have risen by two meters in 2100. And it remains to be seen whether we in the Netherlands will be ready for that by then, let alone that the Maldives can absorb it."
Van den Hurk himself has also contributed to an online interactive IPCC atlas in which a lot of information at regional level is included. "Each region has a detailed assessment of all kinds of extremes. This allows us to zoom in much more than before. By checking attributes, you can see what happens per area. Then it also becomes clear that climate change is a colourful palette of changes that all come together."
When asked by the audience what he thinks of the result of the climate summit in Glasgow, he is clear: "It is not enough to stay below two degrees of temperature rise. On the other hand, you also have nothing to do with beautiful promises that cannot be fulfilled. We are not there yet, so it is good to come back to this every year as agreed now. That takes time, while at the same time the climate continues to impose itself. If we do nothing, we will have to deal with increasingly extreme weather. So we have to keep exploring more and continuously what is possible."
An example such as the floods of last summer in Limburg, but also Vancouver (where it was 50 degrees this summer), the erratic course of some cyclones and all kinds of other extremes show that it is becoming increasingly difficult to get and keep a grip on the statistics. According to Van den Hurk, this statistic is 'adrift'. "Making a probability calculation is going to be a really tricky exercise, but is now often used to determine how we want to prevent the biggest impacts." Adapting to the climate is the norm, because according to Van den Hurk it will take decades before statistics are back to the way they were in 1900.
To the final question whether the government is doing enough, Van den Hurk gives a clear answer. "You can't sustain the government slogan Feasible and affordable . It has to be done anyway, because of the global and European agreements, but also because of the impacts that will become unaffordable. And what is there reason to doubt affordability? All the climate measures you take now to prevent temperature rise will pay for themselves in the future as avoided damage."
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According to Van den Hurk, insurers should not only make an analysis of scenarios and the associated possible impact, but also look at the elasticity of the current system. "Where do you run into the border? Is that only when building floodplains or also when building in the lowest parts of our country? And what does that mean for liability? With the knowledge and observations of today you can really move forward for a while, but it does not say much about the further future. Build that into your policy: keep looking and keep learning!
There is so much knowledge available in our Climate Finance Academy that we are happy to offer the financial sector to let someone from our Academy walk along within your organization. Someone who looks at your processes or vice versa: a statistician from the sector that we link to someone from the Academy. In this way, together we will achieve an effective transfer of knowledge and hopefully also smart preventive solutions."