[Vision2020] Scientist:Greenhouse Gas Levels Now At Dangerous Threshold

[Ted Moffett]

All:

The human race blithely continues on the path to massive catastrophic
climate change, while we think a few compact fluorescents, recycling,
hybrids and car pooling will save the day... What is truly demanded to
address CO2, methane etc. emissions enough to stop a massive
climate disaster, will require such rapid radical changes in life style,
technology and economic trends, the progress of globalization and
industrialization in China and India, et. al., that these changes are very
improbable.  This is of course not a good reason to not make the attempt...
It's a good reason for everyone to immediately make this issue a top
priority in their choices as consumers, becoming informed on how these
choices impact on global warming... And in voting....Anyone notice how human
sourced climate change is mostly off the radar for the US presidential
candidates?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071009/ap_on_sc/climate_change

Gas emissions said at unsafe threshold

By MERAIAH FOLEY, Associated Press Writer 31 minutes ago

Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas
emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another
decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.

Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by
the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data
showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has
already reached critical levels.

Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a
thorough review of the technical data included in the panel's three working
group reports published earlier this year.

Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for IPCC headquarters is in Geneva,
said she was unable to disclose what would be in the final report
synthesizing the data before it is released in November.

"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the
atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause
dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We
are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these
figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."

Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the
Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth," made best-seller lists
worldwide, said the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by
mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations.

"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had
that much time," Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of
projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001,"
when the last major IPCC report was issued.

The new data could add urgency to the next round of U.N. climate change
talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, which will aim to start
negotiations on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in
2012.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tuesday for an international
system of global emissions trading to be adopted as part of an agreement to
flight climate change from 2012 onward.

Speaking at a symposium of Nobel laureates and other leading scientists,
Merkel insisted that only by establishing limits on carbon dioxide output
per individual around the world — suggesting about 2 tons per head — could
the fight to stop global warming be effective.

"Our long-term goal can only be the assimilation of worldwide per capita
emissions," Merkel told the conference.

Her suggestion would mean drastic cuts: Germany currently has a carbon
dioxide output of some 11 tons per person per year, while the U.S. is at
around 20 tons per person.

Flannery said that the recent economic boom in China and India has helped to
accelerate the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, but strong growth in the developed world has also exacerbated
the problem.

"It's a worldwide issue. We've had growing economies everywhere, we're still
basing that economic activity on fossil fuels," he said. "The metabolism of
that economy is now on a collision course clearly with the metabolism of our
planet."

A spokesman for Australia's IPCC delegate, Ian Carruthers, said he was not
available to comment on the report because it was still in draft form.

-------

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20071009/b1a2bf50/attachment.html