Post by Swamp Gas on Dec 26, 2006 1:26:45 GMT -5
observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0%2C%2C1977183%2C00.html
More Than Hot Air
This is the moment when the world seems to get the message at last: climate change is serious and unavoidable. A draft version of the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is published, to worldwide consternation. It reveals that scientists are no longer able to put reliable upper limits on man-made heating of the atmosphere. Global warming - driven by industrial carbon emissions - could end up being far worse than previously predicted.
It remains to be seen if this gloom is maintained in the final version of the IPCC report, which is due out early next year. Drawn together from research collated over the past five years, it promises to be a thorough affair, if nothing else. On the other hand, the original draft document has since been presented to national governments and is now being modified to accommodate individual views. What the Americans might add is intriguing, to say the least. Nevertheless, the report is still likely to contain enough to demonstrate just how worrying are our prospects for surviving the century. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and disruption of the Gulf Stream ocean current are two very real threats that could cause mayhem long before the year 2100.
The fact that the world woke up to the threat of climate change in 2006 was not reflected in political action, of course. The Nairobi talks on implementing carbon emission controls after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, were feeble, producing little that was encouraging.
Nevertheless, there is now a palpable feeling that the world has got the message about climate change, a point hammered home over the autumn by Al Gore's surprising hit film, An Inconvenient Truth. Since then, the Stern Review and others have helped fuel the urgency of the situation, with the most recent reports indicating that the Arctic may become entirely free of sea ice within three decades; that melting Siberian permafrost is now pumping millions of extra tonnes of methane and carbon dioxide into the air; and that the rate of increase in carbon dioxide leaking into the atmosphere is accelerating. As Sir Crispin Tickell, the former diplomat turned environmental spokesman, recently put it, only 'nutcases' now deny the link between man's activities and the profound changes occurring in our climate.
Five other climate changers
26 October: Ken Livingstone plans to replace all London buses by 2012 with vehicles powered by diesel hybrid motors, cutting carbon emissions by 40 per cent per year
26 October: Australia announces plans for one of the world's largest solar generator sites, providing enough power for 45,000 homes
29 November: Professor James Lovelock claims a hotter planet could only support a 10th of its global population. 'An awful lot of people will die,' he says, 'but I don't see the species dying out'
1 September: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California vows to cut emissions by 25 per cent by 2020
6 December: Sales of 4x4 vehicles fall by 6 per cent in the UK in 2006, and by 28 per cent in the U
More Than Hot Air
This is the moment when the world seems to get the message at last: climate change is serious and unavoidable. A draft version of the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is published, to worldwide consternation. It reveals that scientists are no longer able to put reliable upper limits on man-made heating of the atmosphere. Global warming - driven by industrial carbon emissions - could end up being far worse than previously predicted.
It remains to be seen if this gloom is maintained in the final version of the IPCC report, which is due out early next year. Drawn together from research collated over the past five years, it promises to be a thorough affair, if nothing else. On the other hand, the original draft document has since been presented to national governments and is now being modified to accommodate individual views. What the Americans might add is intriguing, to say the least. Nevertheless, the report is still likely to contain enough to demonstrate just how worrying are our prospects for surviving the century. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and disruption of the Gulf Stream ocean current are two very real threats that could cause mayhem long before the year 2100.
The fact that the world woke up to the threat of climate change in 2006 was not reflected in political action, of course. The Nairobi talks on implementing carbon emission controls after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, were feeble, producing little that was encouraging.
Nevertheless, there is now a palpable feeling that the world has got the message about climate change, a point hammered home over the autumn by Al Gore's surprising hit film, An Inconvenient Truth. Since then, the Stern Review and others have helped fuel the urgency of the situation, with the most recent reports indicating that the Arctic may become entirely free of sea ice within three decades; that melting Siberian permafrost is now pumping millions of extra tonnes of methane and carbon dioxide into the air; and that the rate of increase in carbon dioxide leaking into the atmosphere is accelerating. As Sir Crispin Tickell, the former diplomat turned environmental spokesman, recently put it, only 'nutcases' now deny the link between man's activities and the profound changes occurring in our climate.
Five other climate changers
26 October: Ken Livingstone plans to replace all London buses by 2012 with vehicles powered by diesel hybrid motors, cutting carbon emissions by 40 per cent per year
26 October: Australia announces plans for one of the world's largest solar generator sites, providing enough power for 45,000 homes
29 November: Professor James Lovelock claims a hotter planet could only support a 10th of its global population. 'An awful lot of people will die,' he says, 'but I don't see the species dying out'
1 September: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California vows to cut emissions by 25 per cent by 2020
6 December: Sales of 4x4 vehicles fall by 6 per cent in the UK in 2006, and by 28 per cent in the U