UK Climate Scientist: Global Warming will 'wipe out billions'

[Karmadillo]

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Warming-will-39wipe-out-billions39.5867379.jp

Warming will 'wipe out billions'Premium Article 29 November 2009
By Jenny Fyall

MOST of the world's population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree a method of stopping current rates of global warming, one of the UK's most senior climate scientists has warned.

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet's population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson's warning comes just eight days before global leaders meet in Copenhagen for the most crucial talks on climate change reversal since the Rio summit in 1992. Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were "terrifying".

"For humanity it's a matter of life or death," he said. "We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive.

"But I think it's extremely unlikely that we wouldn't have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving."

more...

[FBaggins]

1. They're absolutely correct.

By the end of this century, at least 98% of the current population of the world will be dead.

[Deja Q]

6. Agreed. I'm getting close to 40. It is highly improbable I, like most people, would make it to 130

It's called "basic human biology"; our organic structure cannot endure, on average, and on a good hair day, more than 80 years.

[Iggo]

16. LOL...nice.

[notesdev]

2. And causes AIDS in fish

and makes children in Haiti starve... oh wait, I'm sorry, it's Warmists getting 1/3 of the US agricultural land area devoted to ethanol that does that.

[woo me with science]

3. I hope this improves traffic. nt

[Swamp Rat]

5. LOL!

:rofl:

[Deja Q]

4. Teach people to use prophylactics, monogamy, consideration for others and not breed.

Don't blame me. I'm doing my part. (And I know some will be happy and I'm happy for them with their opinion. But I can say that their own selfishness will lead to their own destruction. Give me a reason to care for those to be blindly hateful.)

[dysfunctional press]

7. people, or money?

or both?

[madrchsod]

8. mother nature used to cull the herd and now we are responsible

[Octafish]

9. That seems to be the plan.

Otherwise, we'd be doing what it takes to save billions.



Oh well, the rich and enough of their toadies will survive.

[Jamastiene]

10. I wish people would listen to the scientists about this, even if

they won't listen to Al Gore. :(

[gordianot]

11. Unfortunately many who may survive are the ultra rich.

Many who are today supporting the deniers stand to profit.

[glinda]

12. Probably why they are hoarding profits. They think they can "buy" life.

[alfredo]

15. But they will have to get their hands dirty because the lumpen

won't be there to do it for them.

[gordianot]

19. When you control the spigots the thirsty will just love you.

[alfredo]

20. If the above prediction of billions dying, society will crumble.

There may not be a "spigot" to control. Large segments of the world may not support groups larger than a couple dozen individuals for a given area like we see in the Kalahari. The "abundant" regions will be a dark and bloody ground as surrounding populations attempt to take control.

[Kaleva]

13. Climate change is coming regardless. Humans need to prepare for it.

[certainot]

14. and there are 1000 radio stations, licensed to operate in the public interest, doing denial

avg of 20 per state.

their local sponsors need to be called and asked why they would sponsor a radio station that blasts their community with the denial that could cause such a catastrophe.

consider that limbaugh and sons will be going all out next week to enable the obstructionists in congress and senate, from 1000 radio stations, 24/7 with little chance for a critic to get past the call screeners.

there's something really wrong with that.

[alfredo]

17. We are the last of the Homo Genus. All others went extinct.

If there is a big shakeout, it might lead isolated populations to evolve into a new species.

Dinosaurs evolved and survived. Can we?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

18. If bet if I called this hysteria, I would be labeled a right wing troll. hmmmm.

Does that make the people labeling the legitimate concern about H1N1 as hysteria right wing trolls also?