Reply #13: Global Warming accelerating scientists say. [View All]

[JohnWxy]

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2009/march/11/yehey/top_stories/20090311top6.html


COPENHAGEN: Only months before make-or-break UN climate talks in Copenhagen, an extraordinary conclave of climate scientists gathered here Tuesday to warn that global warming is accelerating more quickly than forecast by a key UN report for policymakers.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in early 2007 that global warming, if unchecked, would unleash a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by century’s end.

But a welter of new research suggests the impact could be even worse, and will arrive sooner rather than later.

“We need a much stronger sense in our societies of urgency,” John Ashton, Britain’s top climate negotiator, told journalists as the meeting got under way.

Biggest concern

Most worrying, scientists say, is the possibility that human activity—mainly the burning of oil, gas and coal—could trigger natural drivers of global warming which, once unleashed, would be nearly impossible to reverse.

The shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, and the release of billions of tons of greenhouse gases trapped in melting permafrost are two such “positive feedbacks” that could become both cause and consequence of global warming.

The three-day conference is also likely to unveil a new scientific consensus that sea levels are set to rise at least a meter by 2100, more than double the IPCC estimate, which failed to take melt-off from the Greenland Ice Sheet into account.