Monday, November 19, 2007
GLOBAL warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to eventual sea level rises of up to 1.4m, the world’s top climate experts warned at the weekend.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could result in a substantive rise in sea levels over centuries rather than millennia.
The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from India, said: "If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on the United States and China — the world’s biggest polluters — to do more to slow global climate change.
"I look forward to seeing the US and China playing a more constructive role... Climate change imperils the most precious treasures of our planet," he said, and the effects are "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must work together".
The report from the UN panel of scientists was a summary of their previous three. The first covered climate trends; the second, the world’s ability to adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon emissions.
According to the IPCC, enough CO2 has built up to already endanger islands, coastlines and up to two- thirds of the world’s species.
As early as 2020, between 75 million and 250m people in Africa will suffer water shortages, and residents of Asia’s large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report. Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, says the report from the IPCC.
In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level will reach as high as 1.4m above that of about 1850.
Delegations from hundreds of nations will be meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in two weeks to start hammering out a global climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the climate change treaty which expires in 2012.
"The world’s scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice," Mr Ban said. "I expect the world’s policy makers to do the same."
Meanwhile, leading global oil producers Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates pledged $150m (€102.3m) each yesterday to a fund to tackle global warming.
The creation of the fund, now worth $600m, was announced by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Saturday at the opening of the OPEC summit in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, said it would invest $300m in the fund, which is set to focus on finding technological solutions to climate change.
According to the final summit statement, OPEC leaders will insist on the importance of technology to enable the use of "clean oil," notably carbon capture and storage, to help fight global warming.
"We insist on the importance of clean technologies for the protection of the world’s environment and insist on the importance of developing technologies that can help combat the problem of global warming, such as carbon sequestration," the statement read.
Climate change: Clock is ticking
Key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
* Global warming is "unequivocal". Temperatures have risen about 0.75C in the last 100 years.
* About 20% to 30% of all plant and animal species face extinction if temperatures increase by 1.5C to 2.5C. Further rises of this magnitude could see the loss of 40% to 70% of all species.
* Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70% from 1970 to 2004.
* Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250m people in Africa will suffer water shortages.
* Even if greenhouse gases are stabilised, the Earth will keep warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring "abrupt and irreversible" changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the poles, and a corresponding sea level rise in metres.
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