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".
Please! You think the proponents of these global warming theories are going to let something as silly as historical fact get in the way??
I'll start to do my part just as soon as The Independent shuts down its printing presses, which waste immense amounts of energy and tons of newsprint every single day to put out a paper that could just as easily be read online.
Of course not!
Thus, the derisive, jocular laughter.. ;0)
This must please Planned Parenthood.
History really isn't their strong suit.
It's a pleasure to see a post from a real thinker!
The current interglacial period may continue for thousands of years.
The alternatives are the end of this ice age when all the ice is melted or an onset of a new ice age.
I'll take what we have now.
There are other ways to melt ice than 'global warming'.
I assume that this statistic comes comes from inpartial and reliable sources? Did you know that 200,000 people annually die from strokes brought on by reading articles such as this one. Bet you my sources are as good as the global warming statistics.
I have read that the Sun's activity has been steadily increasing for about the last 100 years and that this is a recurring cycle. Some suggest that this is one of the main reasons for temperature fluctuations here on Earth.
Plus, if true, the Sun's increased activity would correspond to the gradual (albeit historically small) global increase in temperatures over the past 100 years.
What say ye??
And the down side to this is?...
According to Edgar Cayce, Lawrence, KS will become a major seaport after the subsidence of the midwestern plains and the creation of the American Inland Sea.
Likewise, Pierre, SD.
It would be wise to invest in properties in these two areas as well.. (( insanity off ))
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