Gas emissions said at unsafe threshold: The burgeoning global economy is now on a collision course with the metabolism of the planet.
- From: Florida <demeter547opine@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:44:06 -0700
Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071009/ap_on_sc/climate_change;_ylt=ApATFBMsL.Jea5cH1CjejUn737YB
Gas emissions said at unsafe threshold
By MERAIAH FOLEY, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 28 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.
© 2007 The Associated Press
.
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