'World has only 20 years to stop climate
disaster'
By Lewis Smith and Ben Hoyle
INTERNATIONAL action to halt climate change must be taken within 20
years or global warming will be irreversible, scientists said
yesterday.
By 2025 the technology needs to be in place to reduce carbon
emissions by 2.6 per cent every year to avoid catastrophic climate
change. Leaving it any later will mean that so much carbon dioxide
has been released into the atmosphere that it will no longer be
feasible to reduce levels sufficiently, the Royal Society was told
yesterday.
The rate of global warming is already worse than was feared in
2001, with melting ice likely to increase sea levels by up to 40ft
unless temperatures are stabilised. In the Antarctic an area of ice
big enough to swallow Britain almost three times over could float
away and melt.
A report published yesterday to provide a comprehensive analysis of
climate research gives warning of irreversible damage to the
ecosystem unless action is taken on an international level. Tony
Blair, writing the foreword to the report, said: It is now plain
that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with
industrialisation and economic growth from a world population that
has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a
rate that is unsustainable.
The report, Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, collates evidence
presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the Met Office at
Exeter last February. Its stark conclusion is that too little is
being done to stem climate change and that the rate of change is
far worse than feared.
Among the aims of the conference was to identify the tipping
points of global warming, the rises in temperature at which it
becomes impossible to halt change. At the publication of the report
at the Royal Society in London last night, Rachel Warren, of the
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, told an audience of
scientists and policy-makers that governments have 20 years in
which to act.
Citing research from the Netherlands, she said that European
countries had accepted a 2C rise in temperature as the maximum that
should be permitted. If we are going to have a reasonable chance
of limiting the change to 2C, emissions need to peak in 2025. From
then they need to be reduced by 2.6 per cent per year, Dr Warren
said.
Terry Barker, of the Tyndall Centre, called for the introduction of
a carbon tax as the best and possibly only effective means of
forcing industry to reduce emissions. According to a computer model
devised by Dr Barker, if governments agree to such a tax at the
same time as encouraging investment in anti-emission technology,
emissions will be radically reduced within decades.
The report identifies the melting of the ice sheets as among the
most serious results of global warming. The Greenland ice sheet is
already reducing and research predicts that a 2.7C rise in
temperatures is the point at which this becomes irreversible,
though it is likely to take centuries for the process to finish.
Estimates of temperature rises this century range from 1.4C to
5.8C.
Chris Rapley, of the British Antarctic Survey, said that the
western Antarctic ice sheet had begun to disintegrate at an
alarming rate since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
report of 2001, when the continent was regarded as stable.
His collegue, David Vaughan, said yesterday that the loss of ice in
Greenland and the western Antarctic would each be likely to
increase sea levels by 16ft or more.
Another crucial point identified by the report was the 1C rise that
would see extensive acidification of the oceans, killing off many
life forms, including 80 per cent of corals.
Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, said the conference
could force a rethink on policy and on the target of reducing
emissions by 60 per cent by the middle of the century.
THE REPORTS WARNINGS
Limiting temperature increase to 2C above pre-industrial levels
should stabilise carbon dioxide concentration to 450 parts per
million (ppm). A concentration of 550ppm would make a 2C maximum
increase virtually impossible
A 1C rise in temperature would lead to 80 per cent of the oceans
corals being destroyed. A 2.7C rise would lead to the irreversible
melting of Greenlands ice sheet
Temperatures are predicted to rise by between 1.4C and 5.8C by the
end of the century. Since 1765 average temperatures have risen by
0.7C. Of this, 0.1C has taken place since 1990
If action to reduce emissions is delayed by 20 years, rates of
reduction will need to be up to seven times greater to meet the
same target
