Climate change outlook becomes more dire than ever

14 Mar 2009

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Latest research suggests that changes due to global warming could hit the world twice as hard as previously predicted, scientists at the international meeting on climate change in Copenhagen said yesterday. The worst-case scenarios on climate change envisaged by the UN two years ago are already being realised, they said.

In a statement on their six key messages to political leaders, they say there is a increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climate shifts. Even modest temperature rises will affect millions of people, particularly in the developing world.

But, most tools needed to cut carbon dioxide emissions already exist, they said. More than 2,500 researchers and economists attended this meeting, designed to update the world on the state of climate research ahead of key political negotiations set for December this year.

New data was presented in Copenhagen on sea level rise (See: Sea levels may rise more than previously thought, says new scientific study), which indicated that the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made two years ago were woefully out of date.

The meeting heard that waters could rise by over a metre across the world, with huge impacts for hundreds of millions of people. There was also new information on how the Amazon rainforest would be affected by rising temperatures. A UK Meteorological Office study concluded there would be a 75-per cent loss of tree cover if the world warmed by three degrees for a century.

The scientists hope that their conclusions will remove any excuses from the political process. Katherine Richardson, who chaired the scientific steering committee that organised the conference, said the research added new certainty to the IPCC reports.

"We've seen lots more data, we can see where we are, no new surprises, we have a problem," she said.

The meeting was also addressed by Lord Stern the economist, whose landmark review of the economics of climate change published in 2006 highlighted the severe cost to the world of doing nothing. (See: Environmental damage will shrink global economy by 20 per cent: UK study)

Former chief economist of the World Bank and currently the UK treasury economist Sir Nicholas Stern, was commissioned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer to conduct the study,  Now a peer, Stern now says the report underestimated the scale of the risks, and the speed at which the planet is warming. He urged scientists to speak out and tell the politicians what the world would be like if effective measures against global warming were not taken. (Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change)

Lord Stern said that if the world was to warm by 5C over the next century, there would be dramatic consequences for millions of people. Rising seas would make many areas uninhabitable, leading to mass migrations and inevitably sparking violent conflict.

"You'd see hundreds of millions people, probably billions of people who would have to move and we know that would cause conflict, so we would see a very extended period of conflict around the world, decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move, " said Lord Stern.

He said that a new, effective global deal was desperately needed to avoid these dramatic scenarios - and the current global economic slowdown was in some ways a help.

"Action is rather attractive, inaction is inexcusable. It's an opportunity, given that resources will be cheaper now than in the future, now is the time to get the unemployed of Europe working on energy efficiency."

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen echoed these views, saying, "Business as usual is dead - green growth is the answer to both our climate and economic problems. I hope the whole world will join us and set a two-degree goal as an ambition of a climate deal in Copenhagen."

UN optimistic on US support
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon predicted on Thursday that a new global climate deal - with US backing - would be reached this year. "With US leadership, in partnership with the United Nations, we can and will reach a climate change deal that all nations can embrace," he told reporters in New York.

The complex effort to replace the last climate treaty, the UN-brokered 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, has risen to the top of Ban's priorities this year. Former president George W Bush's administration pulled out of the Kyoto accord, citing potential economic harm and lack of participation by developing countries.

But Ban, speaking to a monthly news conference at UN headquarters, said he was encouraged by new US approaches to global warming after meeting in Washington with President Barack Obama and congressional leaders earlier this week.

"On climate change, we agree. It is an existential threat. We know what we must do," the secretary-general said. "President Obama and I share a fundamental commitment: 2009 must be the year of climate change. That means reaching a comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen by year's end."

Pachauri echoes concerns
In New Delhi, Nobel laureate Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, who heads The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), warned that ''Even for a range of zero to one degree Celsius (annual rise in temperature), we have problems with water availability. We also have problems with ecosystems. Food security would also be at growing risk." (See: UN climate panel chief Rajendra Pachauri shares Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore)

In India, the Sundarbans has been the worst hit. With over 5,000 people already having lost their land to sea, it now houses the world's largest climate refugee colony.

On the west coast, Gujarat has already lost 1 km of its beach. The entire coast line of India faces a threat, with over seven million people at risk of being displaced.

Chas worried
In Rio de Janeiro, Britain's Prince Charles yesterday called for urgent environmental protection measures. "We are, I fear, at a defining moment in the world's history," he told a meeting of Brazilian business leaders and officials during his Latin America tour.

"The global recession is far worse than any seen for generations," he said, adding that growing demand for energy and food created the potential for "political uncertainty in every continent." But more menacing was that "the threat of catastrophic climate change calls into question humanity's continued survival on the planet."

He stressed, "Any difficulties which the world faces today will be as nothing compared to the full effects which global warming will have on the world-wide economy." The speech was billed as a key presentation in the prince's commitment to environmental conservation.

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