Climate change leaders now say global warming is happening faster than expected

(Photo of German coal-fired plant from Flickr and photographer Bruno D. Rodriguez.)

Weekly Angst: At the end of 2006 and early part of 2007, a series of reports finished the job started by Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and woke the slumbering world to the urgent need to stop global warming or suffer severe consequences. After the Stern and IPCC reports, the debate ended for most, but progress has been slow as governments and fossil-fuel businesses balked at change. Now the same people who told us we needed to take action in the first place are raising the decibels as they warn it’s even worse than they thought. Here is what they and others are saying, little more than a year later.

Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist, whose ground-breaking 2006 report was the basis for policy in the UK and EU, now admits he was overly optimistic about the ability to cut GHG emissions and absorb some of the CO2. Stern now says he "badly underestimated the degree of damages and risks of climate change … Emissions are growing much faster than we'd thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we'd thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates, and the speed of climate change seems to be faster." He now says the developed world must cut emissions by 90% to meet a world-wide 50% reduction by 2050.(Source: Business Green)

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assumptions were too optimistic about cutting CO2, a new study in the journal Nature says. The IPCC report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize and is the basis for international negotiations, assumed that even without changes in government policy, new technology would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions this century. But with huge growth in Asia, based mainly on fossil fuels, the world is going in the wrong direction, say scientists from the University of Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and McGill University in Canada. We need enormous advances in technology to meet our goals, but also policies that motivate innovation, the researchers say. (E&E News PM, EurekAlert)

James Hansen of NASA, one of the lead scientists to sound the alarm about about global warming, has dramatically reduced the amount of CO2 he thinks the atmosphere can tolerate and still keep the planet similar to the one on which civilization developed. Recent research has led Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to the conclusion that CO2 in the atmosphere must be brought down to 350 parts per million (from the current 385) to avoid a tipping point that would cause melting ice sheets and rapidly rising seas. The only way to do that, he says, is to phase out the use of coal by 2030 (unless it can be captured and sequestered). He calls for a moratorium on new coal-fired plants, as well as improved agriculture and forestry to reduce carbon 50 ppm by the end of the century. This assumes that we’re nearing the end of oil reserves and no more drilling will occur on public lands or in pristine areas. It also assumes little extraction of unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands. Hansen says bringing down CO2 levels to 350 would also solve the problem of acidity in oceans and destruction of coral reefs. He warned there must be global cooperation and it needs to start in the next few years. (Source: Environmental News Network.)

The UN Environment Programme warns in a new report, by 338 experts, that the future of humanity is at risk and may be pushed beyond the point of no return. The balance between consumers and resources is seriously out of whack, says Achim Steiner, executive director of the programme. The planet is increasingly stressed by climate change, which is “accelerating at a pace that goes beyond the scenarios and models we’ve been using.” Some regions may soon reach a point of environmental devastation from which they won’t be able to recover, he said, noting the increasing droughts in Africa and melting ice in the Himalayas that will leave China and India short of water. (Source: NaturalNews.)

Next week: Some suggested solutions