Warming to drive droughts, flood, storms in 21st century, says UN panel
Pastor Dale Morgan
Friday February 2, 7:46 PM
*Warming to drive droughts, flood, storms in 21st century, says UN panel*
UN scientists have delivered their starkest warning yet about global
warming, saying fossil fuel pollution would raise temperatures this
century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes and melt polar sea ice.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the United
Nations' paramount scientific authority on global warming -- also dealt
a crippling blow Friday to the shrinking body of opinion that claims
higher temperatures have been driven by natural causes.
It said bluntly that most of the unprecedented rise in Earth's surface
temperature over the past 50 years had "very likely" been caused by
human activity.
This term means a certitude of 90 percent and signals an increase on the
IPCC's previous assessment in 2001, which gave a probability of 66 percent.
The Earth's surface temperatures will rise between 1.8 to 4.0 degrees
Celsius (3.2 to 7.2 degrees Farenheit) and sea levels increase 18 to 59
centimetres (7.1 to 23.2 inches) by 2100, the IPCC's Fourth Assessment
Report said. The scientists said this was their best estimate, from a
broader range of possibilities derived from computer models.
The IPCC also predicted increasingly intense storms, heatwaves and heavy
rains in the decades to come.
The impact of disgorging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere this
century will cause climate disruptions "for more than a millennium" to
come, it said.
"This report is a vital piece of information," said Achim Steiner,
executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
"It enables the world to now respond to climate change not by debating
the science any more but by figuring out how on earth we are going to
live in a world with an environment change scenario that is two, three,
four degrees of global warming." Two to four degrees Celsius is
equivalent to 3.6 to 7.2 degrees Farenheit.
The exhaustive study, culled from work by 2,500 scientists in more than
100 countries, sounded alarms about the impact of carbon pollution,
mostly from the burning of oil, gas and coal.
These fuels release carbon dioxide (CO2), which traps heat from the sun
instead of letting it radiate safely into space.
"We are in a sense doing things have not been done in 650,000 years,"
IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said, referring to rising CO2 levels.
"You are able to see what the costs of inaction are."
Sea ice is predicted to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and in
some projections "Arctic late summer ice disappears almost entirely by
the latter part of the 21st century."
"It is likely that that future tropical cyclones will become more
intense, with large peak wind speeds and heavy precipitation," the IPCC
added.
Unseasonably warm weather, heatwaves and heavy rainstorms are "very
likely" to become more frequent.
British Environment Minister David Miliband said the report confirmed
"concerns that the window of opportunity to avoid dangerous climate
change is closing more quickly than previously thought".
Miliband underlined the IPCC's increased certainty about its main
conclusions as compared to its 2001 report. "The debate over the science
of climate change is well and truly over," he said in a statement.
Environmental pressure groups responded by calling for urgent
international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"The IPCC report embodies an extraordinary scientific consensus that
climate change is already upon us and that human activities are the
cause," said WWF International director general James Leape.
"It is a clarion call to governments to act urgently to slash
emissions," he said.
Jan Kowalzig, climate and energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth,
said the document "scientifically confirms the extent of this man-made
crisis already hitting people around the world and makes bleak
predictions for the future".
He added: "We can no longer afford to ignore growing and compelling
warnings from the world's leading experts."
Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner, Stephanie Tunmore, called the
IPCC report a "screaming siren" of a warning.
"The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact
on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the
more precarious the future looks," Tunmore said.