Climate change is ‘faster and more extreme’ than feared
The UK’s The Daily Telegraph is explaining that Climate change is ‘faster and more extreme’ than feared:
Climate change is happening much faster than the world’s best scientists predicted and will wreak havoc unless action is taken on a global scale, a new report warns.
The bleak report from WWF - formerly the World Wildlife Fund - also predicts crops failures and the collapse of eco systems on both land and sea.
The agency says that the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a study of global warming by 4,000 scientists from more than 150 countries which alerted the world to the possible consequences of global warming - is now out of date.
WWF’s report, Climate Change: Faster, stronger, sooner, has updated all the scientific data and concluded that global warming is accelerating far beyond the IPCC’s forecasts.
As an example it says the first ‘tipping point’ may have already been reached in the Arctic, where sea ice is disappearing up to 30 years ahead of IPCC predictions and may be gone completely within five years - something that hasn’t occurred for a million years.
It could result in rapid and abrupt climate change rather than the gradual changes forecast by the IPCC.
The findings include:
- Global sea level rise could more than double from the IPCC’s estimate of 0.59m by the end of the century.
- Natural carbon sinks, such as forests and oceans, are losing their ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere faster than expected.
- Rising temperatures have already led to a major reduction in food crops resulting in losses of 40m tonnes of grain per year.
- Marine ecosystems in the North and Baltic Sea are being exposed to the warmest temperatures measured since records began.
- The number and intensity of extreme cyclones over the UK and North Sea are projected to increase, leading to increased wind speeds and storm-related losses over Western and Central Europe.
The report was issued to coincide with a meeting of EU Environment Ministers today to discuss new laws aimed at tackling climate change. Some countries, including Italy and Poland, have already rejected proposals for higher cuts in emissions claiming they are unaffordable and unrealistic when many countries are facing recession.
Well I have searched high and low for the actual report and neither the WWF’s own websites, nor Google can find it, so I am not sure what to think. It sounds like an interesting read but it also may not actually exist. We’ll see if the actual report turns up any time soon. — DS
