Scientists are to hold an emergency summit to warn the world’s politicians they are being too timid in their response to global warming. Climate experts from across the world will gather in Copenhagen next month to agree a stark message to policy makers, which they hope will break the political deadlock on efforts to curb rising temperatures. The meeting follows ‘disturbing’ studies that suggest global warming could strike harder and faster than expected. It comes ahead of a year of high-level political discussions on climate change, which climax with international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol. Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who is organising next month’s event, said: ‘This is not a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy.’ The meeting will publish an update to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Richardson said the IPCC report was ‘wishy-washy’ on issues such as sea level rise. ‘The IPCC talks of a 40cm sea rise this century. Well, if the consensus now is a rise of a metre or more then […]
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Scientists Plan Emergency Summit on Climate Change
Author: DAVID ADAM
Source: The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date: Monday 9 February 2009
Link: Scientists Plan Emergency Summit on Climate Change
Source: The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date: Monday 9 February 2009
Link: Scientists Plan Emergency Summit on Climate Change
Stephan: In 1990 I engaged the idea of global warming seriously for the first time, after reading a series of papers on the first scientific inklings of this oncoming crisis. Since that time the two constants I have observed have been the collapse of the time line -- what was once 500 years out is now 50 years in our future -- and the increasingly grave consequences arising from inaction. Let us hope that at last we will see the politicians of the world well and truly serious about this.