Posted on 12/06/2003 4:05:59 PM PST by blam
Melting ice 'will swamp capitals'
By Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor
07 December 2003
Measures to fight global warming will have to be at least four times stronger than the Kyoto Protocol if they are to avoid the melting of the polar ice caps, inundating central London and many of the world's biggest cities, concludes a new official report.
The report, by a German government body, says that even if it is fully implemented, the protocol will only have a "marginal attenuating effect" on the climate change. But last week even this was thrown into doubt amid contradictory signals from the Russian government as to whether it will allow the treaty to come into effect.
Global warming already kills 150,000 people a year worldwide and the rate of climate change is soon likely to exceed anything the planet has seen "in the last million years" says the report, produced by the German Advisory Council on Global Change for a meeting of the world's environment ministers to consider the future of the treaty in Milan this week.
It concludes that the protocol must urgently be brought into force, but only as a first step, insisting that "catastrophic" climate change "can now only be prevented if climate protection targets are set at substantially higher levels than those agreed internationally until now".
The report, written by eight leading German professors, says that "dangerous climatic changes" will become "highly probable" if the world's average temperature is allowed to increase to more than 2 degrees centigrade above what it was before the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Beyond that level the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice cap would begin gradually to melt away, eventually raising sea levels world wide by up to 30 feet, submerging vast areas of land and key cities worldwide. London, New York, Miami, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney, Shanghai, Lagos and Tokyo would be among those largely submerged by such a rise.
Above this mark too, other "devastating" and "irreversible" changes would be likely to take place. These include a cessation of the Indian monsoon and the ending of the Gulf Stream, which would dramatically worsen the climate in Britain and western Europe, even as the world warms. Another risk is the so-called "runaway greenhouse" where rising temperatures lead to the release of huge reservoirs methane stored in permafrost and the oceans, adding to global warming and starting a self-reinforcing cycle that would eventually make the earth uninhabitable.
To avoid such catastrophe, the report says that industrialised countries will have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide by at least 20 per cent by 2020, and by up to 60 per cent by 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would at best cut them by 5 per cent by 2012, and probably less, even if it were brought into force and fully implemented.
In the meantime the world looks as if it will greatly exceed the targets. Writing in The Independent on Sunday today, Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, calculates that global emissions of greenhouse gases could increase by 75 per cent by 2020, "putting the world well on the way to doomsday".
They have SUV's on Mars? Geez...who's doing something sbout that?
It will be like an Iraqui Toyota loaded with fierce Fedayeen using RPGs going against an Abrams with a 129 Howie and a 30mm Chain gun.
Solar activity is the only answer and if they know how to control that, they will finally have my attention. The last couple of days have seen a flurry of global warming scare stories in the press. Trying to counter Russia's opting or pending opting out of Kyoto.
Their lemming like obsession with bad science as in blaming carbon dioxide for climate changes - the same carbon dioxide that we exhale and plants inhale really is unbelievable.
Probably Von Daneken supporters...
And since the French don't take many baths, it explains why the doctors wanted to go on vacation in the open camping areas, instead of treating these people.
Makes perfect sense to me. Explains why French don't get heart disease as much as Americans. They don't live long enough to have heart problems.
If the oceans are gonna rise, I think we should leave the United Nabobs right where they're at. The building will make a nice breakwater.
I see no down side. Except that Tibet might not like the idea.
Will it hit Pittsburgh?!?
The author probably was hoping no one would think to ask the exact question you did.
Yes, I do.
Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
This past Wednesday I attended a public discussion with noted Penn State geologist Richard Alley, one of the recognized experts on global climate change, specializing on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.
An audience member asked how much effect the Kyoto Protocol would have on earth's climate if it was enforced. Alley was honest in replying "not much".
But then he added that when the federal income tax started out at 1% or whatever it was in the beginning, nobody believed it would remain at that low rate very long, the important thing was just getting it into law.
He used that analogy to defend the ratification of Kyoto. And now they want a 60% reduction by 2050? Dream on.
Yep. Here again is proof that 76.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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