-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 20, 2007 1:03:54 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: When the Levee Breaks
Earth today in imminent peril
... and nothing short of a planetary-scale rescue will save us from
environmental cataclysm, according to eminent scientists in a peer-
reviewed scientific journal
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
The Independent (UK), 19 June 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece
Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in
the United States have issued an unambiguous warning to the world:
civilisation itself is threatened by global warming.
They also implicitly criticise the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level
rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice
sheets.
Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimeters, according to
earlier computer models, the true rise might be [10 times greater]
-- as much as several meters <3 meters = 10 feet and 4 meters = 13
feet> by 2100. That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in
"imminent peril".
In a densely referenced scientific paper published in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A some of the
world's leading climate researchers describe in detail why they
believe that humanity can no longer afford to ignore the "gravest
threat" of climate change.
"Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close
to dramatic climate change that could run out of control, with
great dangers for humans and other creatures," the scientists say.
Only intense efforts to curb man-made emissions of carbon dioxide
emissions and other greenhouse gases can keep the climate within or
near the range of the past one million years, they add.
The researchers were led by James Hansen, the director of Nasa's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was the first scientist to
warn the US Congress about global warming.
The other scientists were Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha and Gary
Russell, also of the Goddard Institute, David Lea of the University
of California, Santa Barbara, and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-
Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.
In their 29-page paper, "Climate Change and trace gases", the
scientists frequently stray from the non-emotional language of
science to emphasise the scale of the problems and dangers posed by
climate change.
In an email to The Independent, Dr Hansen said: "In my opinion,
among our papers this one probably does the best job of making
clear that the Earth is getting perilously close to climate changes
that could run out of our control."
The unnatural "forcing" of the climate as a result of man-made
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens to
generate a "flip" in the climate that could "spark a cataclysm" in
the massive ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, the scientists
write.
Dramatic flips in the climate have occurred in the past but none
has happened since the development of complex human societies and
civilisation, which are unlikely to survive the same sort of
environmental changes if they occurred now.
"Civilisation developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure,
during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now
almost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end," the
scientists warn. Humanity cannot afford to burn the Earth's
remaining underground reserves of fossil fuel. "To do so would
guarantee dramatic climate change, yielding a different planet from
the one on which civilisation developed and for which extensive
physical infrastructure has been built," they say.
Dr Hansen said we only have about 10 years to put into effect the
draconian measures needed to curb CO2 emissions quickly enough to
avert a dangerous rise in global temperature. Otherwise, the extra
heat could trigger the rapid melting of polar ice sheets, made far
worse by the "albedo flip" - when the sunlight reflected by white
ice is suddenly absorbed as ice melts to become the dark surface of
open water.
The glaciers and ice sheets of Greenland in the northern
hemisphere, and the western Antarctic ice sheet in the south, both
show signs of the rapid changes predicted with rising temperatures. "
The albedo flip property of ice/water provides a trigger mechanism.
If the trigger mechanism is engaged long enough, multiple dynamical
feedbacks will cause ice sheet collapse," the scientists say. "We
argue that [the time remaining before this occurs, irreversibly] is
at most a century, probably less."
The latest assessment of the IPCC published earlier this year
predicted little or no contribution to 21st century sea level from
Greenland or Antarctica, but the six scientists dispute this
interpretation. "The IPCC analyses and projections fail to account
for the nonlinear physics of wet ice sheet disintegration, ice
streams and eroding ice shelves, nor are they consistent with the
palaeoclimate evidence presented for the absence of discernible lag
between ice sheet forcing and sea-level rise," the scientists say.
Their study looked back over more than 400,000 years of climate
records from deep ice cores and found evidence to suggest that
rapid climate change over a period of centuries, or even decades,
have in the past occurred once the world began to heat up and ice
sheets started melting.
It is not possible to assess the danger level of man-made
greenhouse gases. "However, it is much lower than commonly
assumed. If we have not already passed the danger level, the
energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within
several decades," the scientists say in their findings.
"We conclude that a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost
surely requires a means of extracting [greenhouse gases] from the
air."
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