Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Are we near the global warming point of no return?
I try to preserve a neutral stance about whether global warming is indeed a real threat (not all scientists agree). For the record, however, a major report has been published saying the global warming danger threshold for the world has been nearly reached.
According to the report, the climate can barely afford a 1C rise in average temperatures before massive climate changes hit the planet. These could include widespread agricultural failure, major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rises and the death of forests, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctica and the switching-off of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream.
A task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics spell out the warning in the report Meeting The Climate Change Challenge - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, the report says, the point of no return on global warming may have been reached. This point will be 2C above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8C since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached. More ominously still, the report says a 400 parts per million concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will make that two-degree rise inevitable - and the level is already 379ppm and rising at 2ppm every year.
The authors urge all countries in the G8 group of rich nations to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy by 2010.
I try to preserve a neutral stance about whether global warming is indeed a real threat (not all scientists agree). For the record, however, a major report has been published saying the global warming danger threshold for the world has been nearly reached.
According to the report, the climate can barely afford a 1C rise in average temperatures before massive climate changes hit the planet. These could include widespread agricultural failure, major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rises and the death of forests, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctica and the switching-off of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream.
A task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics spell out the warning in the report Meeting The Climate Change Challenge - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, the report says, the point of no return on global warming may have been reached. This point will be 2C above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8C since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached. More ominously still, the report says a 400 parts per million concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will make that two-degree rise inevitable - and the level is already 379ppm and rising at 2ppm every year.
The authors urge all countries in the G8 group of rich nations to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy by 2010.
