http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2007/2007-02-19-03.asp

Eminent Scientists Warn of Disastrous, Permanent Global Warming

SAN FRANCISCO, California, February 19, 2007 (ENS) - The leaders of

the world's largest general scientific society issued an imperative

climate change warning Sunday. "The atmospheric concentration of

carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than it has been

for at least 650,000 years. The average temperature of the Earth is

heading for levels not experienced for millions of years."

Global warming is not a theory, it is a fact based on a "growing

torrent of information," said the Board of Directors of the American

Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, in its first

consensus statement on climate change. The statement was issued at the

association's annual meeting in San Francisco, which concludes today.

"Scientific predictions of the impacts of increasing atmospheric

concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation

match observed changes. As expected, intensification of droughts, heat

waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a

mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies," the board said.

Earth

This photo-realistic image of the Earth was made using MODIS surface

reflectance data collected and composited over the late spring and

early summer of 2001. (Image by Reto Stockli courtesy NASA Earth

Observatory)

Approved by the board on December 9, 2006, nearly two months before a

similar statement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

the AAAS statement warns, "Delaying action to address climate change

will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as

the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and

more expensive the task will be."

"Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of

effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice

sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in

species' ranges, and more," the board stated.

"The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly

over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions

is now."

"These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage

to come, some of which will be irreversible," warned the board.

The 14 member board includes scientists from Harvard, Yale and

Princeton, the University of Michigan, University of Utah, Ohio State,

Lehigh, the California Institute of Technology, and the James S.

McDonnell Foundation.

Dr. John Holdren, who becomes board president today, told delegates in

his presidential address, "Global climate change is real, humans are

responsible for a substantial part of it, and it's taking us in

dangerous directions."

Holdren

President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Dr. John Holdren delivers his presidential address to delegates at the

2007 AAAS annual meeting. (Photo courtesy AAAS)

Without swift and urgent action, he said, the problems could spiral

toward disastrous, permanent changes for all of life on Earth.

"Climate change is not a problem for our children and our

grandchildren - it is a problem for us. It's already causing harm,"

said Holdren, who serves as director of the Woods Hole Research

Center, and is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental

Policy at Harvard University.

Holdren's address was a review of evidence which, taken together,

shows a planet under profound stress. One of the central problems, and

the most complex, he said, is ending the reliance on fossil fuels that

is damaging and destabilizing the Earth's ecosystem.

The year 2005 was the hottest on record, he said. The 13 hottest years

on record all have occurred since 1990. Twenty-three out of the 24

hottest years have occurred since 1980. The sort of heat wave that

killed 35,000 people in Europe in the summer of 2003 is expected to

become normal by 2050, he warned.

By 2100, Holdren said, some projections say global temperatures could

rival those of the Eocene epoch some 35 million years ago, a time of

global warming that caused waves of extinction in Earth's ecosystem.

He quoted a colleague who envisioned "crocodiles off of Greenland and

palm trees in Wyoming."

But the warming temperatures do not simply make the weather warmer -

they destabilize the weather and generate more extremes, Holdren said.

Some areas are getting wetter; others are experiencing unusual

long-term droughts. Cyclones are becoming more powerful.

mother and child

When Ethiopia's worst drought since 1984-85 hit the southern Somali

region in 2000, 15,000 people found food aid, water and shelter at the

Denan IDP camp in Gode zone. (Photo by Wagdi Othman courtesy WFP)

Between 1950 and 2000, he said, the number of major floods and

wildfires has increased dramatically in almost every region of the world.

To address the challenges, Holdren said that world leaders would have

to cooperate as never before on economic, diplomatic and technological

fronts.

Such cooperation would have to yield new commitments and strategies to

resolve the crushing poverty that affects perhaps two billion people -

about one in every three people on Earth.

A cap on carbon emissions or a "carbon tax" to encourage use of

alternative fuels is "desperately" needed, Holdren said.

In his morning media briefing and his presidential address in the

evening, Holdren said solutions must be pursued across a range of

disciplines - economics, science, medicine, technology, and education.

Holdren cautioned against expectations that a single technological

solution such as nuclear fusion would emerge to solve energy and

climate problems. Eight countries are now cooperating to build a

demonstration fusion facility in France. "Belief in technological

miracles," Holdren told reporters, "is generally a mistake."

Climate change research from around the world was presented at the

annual meeting, which winds up today.

The Inuit people have spent thousands of years working and living in

the Arctic, but climate change is forcing them to change their

traditional way of doing things.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grantee Barry Smit

told conference delegates the Inuit are sometimes not being given the

tools they need to make the correct decisions for their lifestyles.

"We have plenty of climate change models for the Arctic, but often

they do not measure the things the Inuit rely on to make the best

decision on how to use their resources," says Smit, a University of

Guelph researcher and the Canada Research Chair in Global

Environmental Change.

Smit travels to coastal Inuit communities such as Arctic Bay, at the

north end of Baffin Island, to study how the Inuit are adapting to

climate change. Smit says the transfer of knowledge between the old

and the young today does not happen as often as it used to, and the

knowledge itself is no longer as relevant.

snowmobile

Inuit husband and wife share a snowmobile ride on Baffin Island.

(Photo courtesy Jim and Louise Wholey)

"A generation ago, Inuit used dogs to travel over sea ice. Now they

use snowmobiles, which are faster and more convenient, but don't sense

thin ice like dogs do," Smit said. "As ice becomes more unpredictable

with climate change, this is becoming a serious problem. Degradation

of the permafrost is affecting travel on the land and the stability of

some structures."

Bridging the gap between scientific and traditional knowledge is the

impetus Smit uses as part of ArcticNet, a Network of Centres of

Excellence that studies the impact of climate change in the North.

At a news conference on the opening day of the meeting, Thursday,

Lonnie Thompson, who has achieved global recognition for studying ice

cores to learn about climate change, warned that Peru's Quelccaya, the

world's largest ice cap, has lost about 22 percent of its glacial mass

over the past 20 years and is retreating at 200 feet per year.

A geological sciences professor at Ohio State, Thompson said that in

Peru tropical glaciers like Quelccaya store essential fresh water for

consumption, agriculture and hydroelectricity.

glacier

The retreating Qori Kalis glacier in the Andes of Peru. 2000. (Photo

courtesy Lonnie Thompson)

Glacial melt also endangers communities through avalanches and floods,

Thompson said, bringing an increased risk of dam breach and floods.

"The flora and fauna of mountain climates are very sensitive, both for

the organisms that live in them, and the communities that depend on

them," said Professor John David All, a specialist in geography,

global climate change and international environmental law at Western

Kentucky University.

Organizer and moderator of a related symposium on mountains and

climate change, All said that mountain communities must adapt to the

changing climate.

"In California, the increase in glacial melt changes the runoff

season. In some places, it occurs in February or March - too early for

the growing season," said All. "When you get hooked on high water

runoff, and then it dies, it is bad if you have not prepared."

All added that melting snow pack on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa has

the potential to affect Tanzanian tourism, the nation's largest

industry. "Would you invest in hotels if you know the snow was

melting?" he asked.

Henry Diaz, climate researcher with the U.S. National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration, is concerned that human implications of

changing mountain environments are not widely understood.

Diaz has recorded a two degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature since

the mid-1970s in Western mountains of the United States. This has

caused snowmelt and flowering of trees to occur about two weeks

earlier than 50 years ago.

"The issue is ignored, but demands on mountains are high and snow pack

have clear economic and social impacts," said Diaz. "The message is

not getting out because mountains are under-instrumented and the

information is scattered among different experts."

Citing shrinking tropical glaciers on mountains in the Andes,

Himalayas, and on Kilimanjaro, Thompson warned that many show evidence

of the disappearance of glacial mass that accumulated over 5,000 years.

Even if we stopped producing greenhouse gases immediately, Thompson

said, we would not see an immediate benefit because "there are still

some gases and energy stored in the system."

Posted to ClimateConcern