  |
|
Call for 'climate summit' as scientists ponder grim report
By Richard Ingham
AFP
PARIS
Petroleumworld.com 01 31 06Demands for a world summit on climate change gathered pace on Tuesday as scientists pored over a draft report that says by 2100 global warming will unleash bouts of extreme heat, dryness and rainfall and make typhoons and hurricanes more violent.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on Tuesday became the second UN organisation to urge new Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to call a paramount meeting on global warming.
"There is a plan to seek the support of the secretary general for a special climate summit involving heads of state," UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall told AFP in Nairobi, where Ban was to meet UNEP chief Achim Steiner.
"2007 is a critical year for taking the next steps toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
The summit plan was launched earlier this month by Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), amid deepening concern for the Kyoto Protocol after its present commitment period runs out in 2012.
Kyoto -- the only international treaty to set targets for limiting the fossil fuel pollution that causes the greenhouse effect -- has been in a bad way since it was abandoned in 2001 by the United States, which accounts for nearly a quarter of all global carbon emissions.
Even if its pledges are met, Kyoto will deliver just a tiny fraction of the reductions needed to stave off climate damage, so the post-2012 curbs must deliver swingeing cuts.This means negotiators must coax the United States back into some global deal and also encourage China, India and Brazil -- now big polluters in their own right -- to rein in their own emissions.
In Paris, meanwhile, a report drafted for the UN's top climate scientists said there was now a 90-percent probability that man-made greenhouse gases had driven up Earth's surface temperature over the past half century.
Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the warmest years for which there are reliable records, according to the draft, which is being discussed line by line at the four-day meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, the principal greenhouse gas, stood at around 280 parts per million (ppm).
Today, CO2 concentrations are around 380 ppm and are rising between at two and three ppm per year.
According to the draft "summary for policymakers", a copy of which was obtained by AFP, the temperature has already risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Farenheit) over the last century.
The average temperature of the global seas has increased to depths of at least 3,000 metres (10,500 feet), showing that the warming of the atmosphere is now spreading to the deep ocean.
In 2001, the IPCC predicted global atmospheric temperatures would rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 degress C (2.52-10.4 degrees F) by 2100 compared to 1990, depending on how much CO2 was in the air.
In this latest assessment, the draft forecasts what temperature rise can be expected according to the CO2 scenario, but without mentioning the 2100 timeframe.
With CO2 at 550ppm, average global temperatures would be between 2 and 4.5 degrees C (3.6-8.1 degrees F) higher than pre-industrial times, "with a best estimate of about 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F)", says the report.
It warns, though, that "values substantially higher than 4.5 degrees C (8.1 degrees F) cannot be excluded" if CO2 concentrations also rise significantly.
Among other things, the document declares it "very likely" that heatwaves and pounding rain will become more frequent, snow cover is projected to contract and typhoons and hurricanes will become less frequent but more powerful.
And it says that CO2 pollution spewed out this century will stoke global warming and sea-level rise "for more than a millennium", given the time it takes for fossil fuel pollution to degrade.
Asked to comment on the draft, Jean-Charles Hourcade of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said "the experts are more pessimistic about climate sensitivity" than before.
"It's like a pot on a fire. You carry on heating it and at one point it boils over."
The IPCC report is the fourth assessment since the expert scientific panel was set up in 1988 to help guide policymakers.
The Paris document, on the scientific basis for global warming, will be issued on Friday. It is one of three that the IPCC will issue this year, the others being on the effects of climate change and how to cope with them.
AFP 30 1632 GMT 01 07
Copyright© 1999 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels