Global Warming link o' the day
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7494178
U.N.: Results of ignoring climate change are dire
By Doug Struck
The Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 11/18/2007 01:55:14 AM MST
Baked earth at the Fervenza reservoir in Dumbria where the water is far below usual levels, 13 November 2007. The UN's Nobel-winning panel on climate change completed in Valencia, 16 November 2007 a draft report that said the consequences of global warming could be far-reaching and irreversible. (AFP | Miguel Riopa)
The world will have to end growth of carbon emissions within seven years and become mostly free of carbon- emitting technologies in about four decades to avoid killing off as many as a quarter of the planet's species, according to top United Nations scientists.
The stark choices laid out Saturday by the agency's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describe the daunting task if the world is to avoid the consequences of temperatures raised up by more than 3.6 degrees since 2000.
The panel, which distilled research from about 2,500 scientists, avoided moral conclusions about how much global warming is too much.
"The scientists now have done their work. I call on political leaders to do theirs," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said upon formally receiving the report Saturday in Valencia, Spain.
But the tables laid out in the report describe mounting grim consequences for each degree of atmospheric heating of the planet and the difficult steps that must be taken to avoid the worst of those consequences.
To avoid heating the globe by the minimum amount possible - an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - the world's spiraling growth in greenhouse-gas emissions must end no later than 2015, the report said, and must start to drop quickly after that peak.
By 2050, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 percent to 85 percent, according to the estimates.
That would require a drastic reworking of industrial processes, transportation, agricultural practices and even the buildings people live in, according to the report's calculations.
"We may have already overshot that target," said David Karoly, one member of the core team that wrote the report. Current emissions already are nearing the 2015 threshold, he said in an interview from Valencia.
Even at that threshold, the seas will continue to swell for centuries from thermal expansion and meltwater from ice caps and glaciers; the oceans will turn more acidic; most coral reefs will become lifeless expanses; floods and storms will increase; and millions of people will be short of the water they need, the report said.
"These are extremely serious findings," said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri.
But if the world misses the 2015 target and does not stabilize carbon dioxide emissions until 2030, for example, the planet's temperature will increase by as much as 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit above 2000 temperatures, the report said. That level of warming would result in widespread extinctions of species, a slowing of the global currents, decreased food production, loss of 30 percent of global wetlands, flooding for millions of people and higher numbers of deaths from heat waves.
Policymakers in Europe and other governments have generally regarded the 3.6-degree rise as the maximum the world should tolerate. The Bush administration has resisted making such a judgment, and John Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has said that goal "is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives."
The scientists who wrote the report officially declined to recommend such a threshold because it "involves value judgments."
"Unfortunately, that is a question people are ducking for too long," Pachauri said in an interview from Valencia after the end of the week-long deliberations by delegates of 130 countries. "We need to define thresholds beyond which we won't go. It really is a matter of life or death for some communities on Earth," Pachauri said in the interview.
In a final speech to the delegates, the U.N.'s Ban told how impressed he was on recent trips to the Amazon jungle and Antarctica, both of which would be severely threatened if global warming continues, he said.
"If the panel's most severe projection comes through, much of the Amazon rainforest will transform into savannah," he said. "These things are as frightening as science-fiction movies. But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."
Key findings of the report
Global warming is "unequivocal." Temperatures have risen 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 100 years. Eleven of the past 12 years are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.
About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, between 40 percent and 70 percent of species could disappear.
Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than the natural range over the past 650,000 years.
Climate change will affect poor countries most but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.
Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.
Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring "abrupt and irreversible" changes, such as the loss of ice sheets at the poles and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.
A wide array of tools exist, or will soon, to adapt to climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price on carbon emissions.
By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is delayed, the more it will cost.
The Associated Press
U.N.: Results of ignoring climate change are dire
By Doug Struck
The Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 11/18/2007 01:55:14 AM MST
Baked earth at the Fervenza reservoir in Dumbria where the water is far below usual levels, 13 November 2007. The UN's Nobel-winning panel on climate change completed in Valencia, 16 November 2007 a draft report that said the consequences of global warming could be far-reaching and irreversible. (AFP | Miguel Riopa)
The world will have to end growth of carbon emissions within seven years and become mostly free of carbon- emitting technologies in about four decades to avoid killing off as many as a quarter of the planet's species, according to top United Nations scientists.
The stark choices laid out Saturday by the agency's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describe the daunting task if the world is to avoid the consequences of temperatures raised up by more than 3.6 degrees since 2000.
The panel, which distilled research from about 2,500 scientists, avoided moral conclusions about how much global warming is too much.
"The scientists now have done their work. I call on political leaders to do theirs," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said upon formally receiving the report Saturday in Valencia, Spain.
But the tables laid out in the report describe mounting grim consequences for each degree of atmospheric heating of the planet and the difficult steps that must be taken to avoid the worst of those consequences.
To avoid heating the globe by the minimum amount possible - an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - the world's spiraling growth in greenhouse-gas emissions must end no later than 2015, the report said, and must start to drop quickly after that peak.
By 2050, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 percent to 85 percent, according to the estimates.
That would require a drastic reworking of industrial processes, transportation, agricultural practices and even the buildings people live in, according to the report's calculations.
"We may have already overshot that target," said David Karoly, one member of the core team that wrote the report. Current emissions already are nearing the 2015 threshold, he said in an interview from Valencia.
Even at that threshold, the seas will continue to swell for centuries from thermal expansion and meltwater from ice caps and glaciers; the oceans will turn more acidic; most coral reefs will become lifeless expanses; floods and storms will increase; and millions of people will be short of the water they need, the report said.
"These are extremely serious findings," said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri.
But if the world misses the 2015 target and does not stabilize carbon dioxide emissions until 2030, for example, the planet's temperature will increase by as much as 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit above 2000 temperatures, the report said. That level of warming would result in widespread extinctions of species, a slowing of the global currents, decreased food production, loss of 30 percent of global wetlands, flooding for millions of people and higher numbers of deaths from heat waves.
Policymakers in Europe and other governments have generally regarded the 3.6-degree rise as the maximum the world should tolerate. The Bush administration has resisted making such a judgment, and John Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has said that goal "is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives."
The scientists who wrote the report officially declined to recommend such a threshold because it "involves value judgments."
"Unfortunately, that is a question people are ducking for too long," Pachauri said in an interview from Valencia after the end of the week-long deliberations by delegates of 130 countries. "We need to define thresholds beyond which we won't go. It really is a matter of life or death for some communities on Earth," Pachauri said in the interview.
In a final speech to the delegates, the U.N.'s Ban told how impressed he was on recent trips to the Amazon jungle and Antarctica, both of which would be severely threatened if global warming continues, he said.
"If the panel's most severe projection comes through, much of the Amazon rainforest will transform into savannah," he said. "These things are as frightening as science-fiction movies. But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."
Key findings of the report
Global warming is "unequivocal." Temperatures have risen 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 100 years. Eleven of the past 12 years are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.
About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, between 40 percent and 70 percent of species could disappear.
Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than the natural range over the past 650,000 years.
Climate change will affect poor countries most but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.
Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.
Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring "abrupt and irreversible" changes, such as the loss of ice sheets at the poles and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.
A wide array of tools exist, or will soon, to adapt to climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price on carbon emissions.
By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is delayed, the more it will cost.
The Associated Press