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  PlanetArk 31 Jan 06
Global Warming Demands Urgent Solutions - Scientists
Story by Jeremy Lovell

Channel NewsAsia 30 Jan 06
Global warming study: polar ice sheets could start to melt this century
AFP

LONDON : Global warming could cause ice at both poles of the Earth to start melting this century, driving up sea levels, according to a major study published by the British government.

The study, "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change", collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference staged a year ago ahead of the 2005 Group of Eight (G8) summit, where Britain placed global warming high on the agenda.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair added his voice to the warning on Monday. "It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought," Blair said in the study's foreword.

"It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."

The consensus view among scientists, the document warned, is of large-scale and irreversible disruption to the planet's climate system if temperatures rise by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above current levels.

Such a rise is well within the range of climate change projections for the century, it said, warning: "In many cases the risks are more serious than previously thought." The international conference, which took place in Exeter, southwest England, was the biggest gathering of climate scientists since a landmark report in 2001 published under UN auspices.

That report confirmed that temperatures were rising and pinned the blame on carbon emissions disgorged mainly by the burning of oil, gas and coal. It said that future greenhouse gas emissions were likely to raise global temperatures by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1990 to 2100. The temperature has already risen about 0.6 Celsius (1.6 Fahrenheit) since 1900.

But the UN report also acknowledged some uncertainties as to when, where and how this pollution would affect the climate.

The latest study says that some of the knowledge gap has been filled. Compared with the UN report, it said, there "is greater clarity and reduced uncertainty" about the impacts of climate change across a wide range of systems, sectors and societies.

There is a serious risk of large-scale, irreversible system disruption, including the possible destabilisation of the Antarctic ice sheets if the warming goes beyond 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above current levels, the report warned. A regional increase of 2.7 Celsius (4.9 Fahrenheit) above present levels could trigger melting of the Greenland ice cap, it said.

It said increasing acidity in the ocean would be likely to reduce the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and affect the entire marine food chain.

Even a more modest rise in global temperatures of about 1 Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) would probably lead to extensive coral bleaching, the report said.

PlanetArk 31 Jan 06
Global Warming Demands Urgent Solutions - Scientists
Story by Jeremy Lovell

LONDON - The world must halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiralling towards destruction, scientists said on Monday. Saying that evidence of catastrophic global warming from burning fossil fuels was now incontrovertible, the experts from oceanographers to economists, climatologists and politicians stressed that inaction was unacceptable.

"Climate change is worse than was previously thought and we need to act now," Henry Derwent, special climate change adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said at the launch of a book of scientific papers on the global climate crisis.

Researcher Rachel Warren from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, who contributed to the book "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change", said carbon dioxide emissions had to peak no later than 2025, and painted a picture of rapidly approaching catastrophe.

Global average temperatures were already 0.6 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and a rise of just 0.4C more would see coral reefs wiped out, flooding in the Himalayas and millions more people facing hunger, she said.

A rise of 3C - just half of what scientists have warned is possible this century - would see 400 million people going hungry, entire species being wiped out and killer diseases such as dengue fever reaching pandemic proportions.

"To prevent all of this needs global emissions to peak in 2025 and then come down by 2.6 percent a year," Warren said. "But even then we would probably face a rise of 2 degrees because of the delay built into the climate system. So we have to start to plan to adapt," she added.

Already the effects of the change are becoming visible, with more extreme weather events and people in coastal areas put at risk from rising sea levels due to melting ice caps.

The first phase of the global Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions runs until 2012, and negotiations have only just started on finding a way of taking it beyond that. The United States, the world's biggest polluter, has rejected both the protocol in its current form and any suggestion of expanding or extending it. Instead it has set up with Australia, India, China, Japan and South Korea the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development.
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