Re: [A-List] Countdown to global catastrophe

["Gary Santos" <garysantos@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Global warming, peak oil, significant economic imbalances the world over, an
agenda of "freedom" by the current US administration, Iraq. . . Who can ask
for more? If this were a novel, the climax seems to be just around the
corner.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Totten" <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "A-List" <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 4:36 PM
Subject: [A-List] Countdown to global catastrophe


>
> by Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
>
> The Independent (January 24 2005)
>
>
> The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for
the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the
bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
>
> The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force
of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the
world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as ten years, or even less,
their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have
been reached.
>
> The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in
every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide
with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005
as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.
>
> And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such
a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the
temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to
disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure,
water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and
the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic
events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice
sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.
>
> The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade 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), which retain the sun's heat in the
atmosphere - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that
global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees 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, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and
says it will be 400 parts per million by volume of carbon dioxide.
>
> The current level is 379 parts per million, and rising by more than 2
parts per million annually - so it is likely that the vital 400 parts per
million threshold will be crossed in just ten years' time, or even less
(although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into
effect).
>
> "There is an ecological timebomb ticking away", said Stephen Byers, the
former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force that produced the
report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe. It was assembled by the
Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Centre for American
Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute. The group's chief
scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
>
> The report urges all the G8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of
their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their
research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. It also calls
on the G8 to form a climate group with leading developing nations such as
India and China, which have big and growing carbon dioxide emissions.
>
> "What this underscores is that it's what we invest in now and in the next
twenty years that will deliver a stable climate, not what we do in the
middle of the century or later", said Tom Burke, a former government adviser
on green issues who now advises business.
>
> The report starkly spells out the likely consequences of exceeding the
threshold. "Beyond the two degrees celcius level, the risks to human
societies and ecosystems grow significantly", it says.
>
> "It is likely, for example, that average-temperature increases larger than
this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers
of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts.
[They] could also imperil a very high proportion of the world's coral reefs
and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including
the Amazon rainforest."
>
> It goes on: "Above the two degrees level, the risks of abrupt,
accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities
include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss
of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could
raise sea level more than ten metres over the space of a few centuries), the
shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf
Stream), and the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from a net
sink of carbon to a net source of carbon."
>
> Copyright 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603975
>
>
> Bill Totten     http://billtotten.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>
>
>
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