http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1207-04.htm
Published on Sunday,
December 7, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
Global Warming: Melting Ice 'Will Swamp
Capitals'
by Geoffrey Lean
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 industrialized
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".
© 2003 Independent
Digital (UK) Ltd
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