[Mb-civic] Global Warming Approaching Point of No Return, Warns Leading Climate Expert

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0123-01.htm

Published on Sunday, January 23, 2005 by the lndependent/UK  
Global Warming Approaching Point of No 
Return, Warns Leading Climate Expert  
by Geoffrey Lean 
  
Global warning has already hit the danger point that international 
attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's 
top climate watchdog.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an 
international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius 
this month that he personally believes that the world has "already 
reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in 
the atmosphere" and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts in 
the pollution if humanity is to "survive". 

His comments rocked the Bush administration - which immediately 
tried to slap him down - not least because it put him in his post after 
Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to international action 
on global warming, complained that his predecessor was too 
"aggressive" on the issue.

A memorandum from Exxon to the White House in early 2001 
specifically asked it to get the previous chairman, Dr Robert 
Watson, the chief scientist of the World Bank, "replaced at the 
request of the US". The Bush administration then lobbied other 
countries in favor of Dr Pachauri - whom the former vice-president 
Al Gore called the "let's drag our feet" candidate, and got him 
elected to replace Dr Watson, a British-born naturalized American, 
who had repeatedly called for urgent action.

But this month, at a conference of Small Island Developing States 
on the Indian Ocean island, the new chairman, a former head of 
India's Tata Energy Research Institute, himself issued what top 
United Nations officials described as a "very courageous" challenge.

He told delegates: "Climate change is for real. We have just a small 
window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a 
moment to lose."

Afterwards he told The Independent on Sunday that widespread 
dying of coral reefs, and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic, had driven 
him to the conclusion that the danger point the IPCC had been set 
up to avoid had already been reached.

Reefs throughout the world are perishing as the seas warm up: as 
water temperatures rise, they lose their colors and turn a ghostly 
white. Partly as a result, up to a quarter of the world's corals have 
been destroyed.

And in November, a multi-year study by 300 scientists concluded 
that the Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the world 
and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up to 20 per cent in the past three 
decades.

The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than it was in the 1970s and is 
expected to disappear altogether by 2070. And while Dr Pachauri 
was speaking parts of the Arctic were having a January "heatwave", 
with temperatures eight to nine degrees centigrade higher than 
normal.

He also cited alarming measurements, first reported in The 
Independent on Sunday, showing that levels of carbon dioxide (the 
main cause of global warming) have leapt abruptly over the past two 
years, suggesting that climate change may be accelerating out of 
control.

He added that, because of inertia built into the Earth's natural 
systems, the world was now only experiencing the result of pollution 
emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects would occur as the 
increased pollution of later decades worked its way through. He 
concluded: "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive." 

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

###
 

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