Scientists issue dire warning about climate state at Copenhagen summit
Thu 12 March 2009
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2,500 climate scientists from over 70 countries ended a three-day conference in Copenhagen with stark warnings about the state of Earth's climate. In a joint communication, they said that a failure to agree strong carbon reduction targets at political negotiations this year could bring "abrupt or irreversible" shifts in climate that "will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with".
The Copenhagen meeting was held as part of the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference that Denmark is to host in December. It was arranged to provide an update on scientific thinking on climate change. The December conference aims to seek an agreement on a new international treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists addressing the conference said that carbon emissions have risen more in recent years than anyone thought possible, and that the world's natural carbon stores could be losing the ability to soak up human pollution.
The conference also heard that:
· A 4C rise could turn swaths of southern Europe to desert.
· Sea levels will rise twice as fast as official estimates predict.
· Modest warming could unleash a carbon "time bomb" from Arctic soils.
· A failure to cut emissions could render half of the world uninhabitable.
· Rising temperatures could kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest.
The meeting was attended by among others Rajendra K Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations climate body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for work on climate change.
In a significant break from the scientific tradition of not commenting directly on policy, the scentists insisted politicians must stand up to "vested interests that increase emissions" and "build on a growing public desire for governments to act". They called for a "shift from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society".
The scientists were joined by Sir Nick Stern, author of the ground-breaking review on climate change economics who said that politicians have failed to take on board the severe consequences of failing to cut carbon emissions. He said (quoted in The Guardian): "Do the politicians understand just how difficult it could be? Just how devastating four, five, six degrees centigrade would be? I think not yet. Looking back, the Stern review underestimated the risks and underestimated the damage from inaction."
Katherine Richardson, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen, which organised the three-day summit, said: "We have to act and we have to act now. We need politicians to realise what a risk it is they are taking on behalf of their own constituents, the world's societies and, even more importantly, future generations. All of the signals from the Earth system and the climate system show us we are on a path that will have enormous and unacceptable consequences."
Also speaking at the Copenhagen climate conference, a leading biofuels expert said that the industry needs to step up efforts to enhance yields from energy crops. Professor Claus Felby of the University of Copenhagen warned that with demand for first-generation biofuels likely to continue to grow over the coming decades, the onus was on the industry to identify ways of increasing production without expanding the amount of agricultural land it requires for feedstock. (For more details click here.)
The LowCVP conference will feature a session on the latest developments in climate science, including a summary of the discussions in Copenhagen. (See associated link)
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