Global warming is 'even worse than feared'...
Immediate action is needed to protect the Earth from dramatic climate change, a top United Nations scientist has warned. Dr Robert Watson was speaking as an influential UN body formally published its third assessment on climate change. The report says global temperatures are rising nearly twice as fast as previously thought.
Dr Watson, who chairs the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), dismissed President George W Bush's doubts about the reality of global warming. "We know enough to say climate change is a serious environmental issue," said Dr Watson.
A host of recent studies have predicted catastrophic consequences for the environment because of global warming. Other research papers, although not as numerous, have been far more circumspect in their analysis of climate change, pointing up the many uncertainties that still grip the research field. But the UN's IPCC report has the weight of 3,000 scientists, including several of the world's most distinguished meteorologists, behind it.
They have given their unqualified backing to the argument that global warming is happening, and at a much faster rate than was expected.
news.bbc.co.uk
And, incidentally, on the US plan to use 'carbon sinks' (which I've criticised before on here):
"We do not fully understand the processes that control how much CO2 is absorbed by vegetation and soils acting as sinks. And we need more reliable methods of quantifying and verifying their contribution towards targets set by the protocol. They may help to reduce greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere during the short term. But the amounts of CO2 that can be stored are small compared with emissions from the burning of fossil fuels."
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While they are intended to increase the amount of CO2 absorbed by sinks, it says, they may actually increase climate change by releasing other greenhouse gases, like methane and nitrous oxide.
The report says the maximum contribution from such changes, and from slowing deforestation, is modest. It estimates it at a quarter of the emissions cuts needed by 2050 to avoid large increases in global average temperatures.
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"The size of the potential sinks is quite modest, and they'd all be used up in a few decades. And they're not very stable. If you chop down the trees you release the carbon, and if you convert the land to wetland you release methane.
Global warming itself may turn them from sinks to sources of carbon. Rising temperatures will make the bacteria more active, and they'll break down the carbon faster."
news.bbc.co.uk
Stop denying it... before it's too late to cure... |
