Climate change: Frisson-laden year lies ahead
Pastor Dale Morgan
Climate change: Frisson-laden year lies ahead*
PARIS, Dec 7 (AFP) Dec 07, 2006
Nothing beats a whiff of Apocalypse for focussing minds and, next year,
climate change will be the big issue that will send an icy shiver down
spines followed by a clamour for action.
On February 1, the world's top scientists will issue their first
instalment of a massive three-part update on global warming.
It will be the first knowledge review by the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2001 -- and the phone-book-sized
report will convey an unvarnished message that will be bleak and quite
possibly terrifying.
Those close to the IPCC say it will not only confirm the grim warnings
of the past but also amplify them.
It will declare that climate change is already on the march -- and
newly-discovered mechanisms in the complex climate system could worsen
the threat.
"The [temperature] trends that were expected will be unchanged," says
Herve Le Treut, director of research at France's National Centre for
Scientific Research (CNRS).
"But one can add positive feedbacks that weren't measured a few years
ago. The range of possible risks and awareness of them has widened."
In its 2001 report, the IPCC projected that global mean temperatures
would rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 C (2.5-10.4 F) by 2100 compared with
their 1990 level, depending on the atmospheric levels of carbon
pollution, which traps heat from the Sun.
That estimated temperature range will not change, if Le Treut's rough
forecast of the IPCC findings is correct.
However, the report will also warn of newly-found "positive feedbacks"
-- in ordinary language, vicious circles -- that could accelerate and
possibly worsen the effects of climate change.
These include the loss of polar ice and alpine snow cover, which drives
up temperatures because of the loss of whiteness which reflects
sunlight, and the gradual melting of Siberian permafrost, releasing
gigatonnes of carbon that had been stored for millennia in the frozen soil.
The IPCC's 4th Assessment Report "is going to shock a lot of people,"
says Hans Verolme of the green group WWF.
The long-awaited document comes on the heels of a string of studies in
the world's science journals in 2006 that pointed to Greenland's
shrivelling icesheet, loss of Antarctic glaciers, acidification of the
ocean by absorption of CO2 and hammer blows to biodiversity as species
habitat shifts or is destroyed.
Added to that was the report by British economist Sir Nicholas Stern,
which highlighted the cost of failing to tackle greenhouse gas pollution.
If no action is taken on emissions, there is a more than a 75-percent
chance that global temperatures will rise by between two and three
degrees Celsius (3.6-5.4 F) over the next half century, an increase that
would slash global economic output by three percent, the Stern Report said.
Overall, public awareness about climate change is rising all the time --
but this contrasts starkly with the action being taken by politicians.
The annual conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), which took place in Nairobi in November, was a dreary circus
of showy rhetoric.
The meeting, as expected, stood by the Kyoto Protocol for curbing
greenhouse gases.
But it did almost nothing concrete for determining how this treaty --
burdened by its own complexities, weakened by a US walkout -- could
deliver much faster, far deeper pollution cuts for the future.
That goes to the core of the problem.
Scrapping or modifying dirty carbon-spewing power stations and vehicles
costs money, and people are loth to make sacrifices if they suspect
competitors are getting a free ride.
Despite this, 2006 also saw the undercurrent of coming political change,
most notably in the United States, the world's No. 1 polluter.
California vowed to cap its carbon emissions by 2020 in line with
Kyoto's 1990 benchmark and sued automakers for damage to the state's
climate system.
And, after their crushing victory in the US Congressional elections in
November, the Democrats vowed to initiate climate-change legislation
early next year.
Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis at a US think tank, the Pew
Center on Global Climate Change, cautions that the incoming two-year
Congress is relatively moderate.
It is likelier to go for a gradualist approach, implementing
"climate-friendly" laws that nibble at President George W. Bush's
voluntary approach on carbon emissions rather than bulldoze it away
completely, she predicts.
"It may not be as sweeping as, for example, the EU [carbon] trading
system -- yet," she said. "But it could lay the groundwork for a trading
system, for example by requiring mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas
emissions."
Other action could be new laws covering emissions by utilities or road
transport, both of which would be sellable to the US public on the
grounds that they save energy and thus reduce US dependence on imported
oil, says Arroyo.