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World may get greener, then wilt, due warming
Alister Doyle, Reuters
Global warming is expected to turn the planet a bit greener by spurring plant growth but crops and forests may wilt beyond mid-century if temperatures keep rising, according to a draft U.N. report.
Scientists have long disputed about how far higher temperatures might help or hamper plants — and farmers — overall. Plants absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when they rot.
“Global agricultural production potential is likely to increase with increases in global average temperature up to about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), but above this it is very likely to decrease,” the draft said.
Plants in tropical and dry regions from Africa to Asia are set to suffer from even a small rise in temperatures, threatening more hunger linked to other threats such as desertification, drought and floods.
But some plants in temperate regions, such as parts of Europe or North and South America, could grow more in a slightly warmer world, according to the draft.
(15 March 2007)
Hansen grim on sea level rise
Kerry Obrien, ABC transcript
KERRY O’BRIEN: Jim Hansen, now we’ve had the IPCC report, do you believe the world has an accurate picture of the risks ahead for global warming?
DR JAMES HANSEN, NASA CLIMATOLOGIST: There is quite a large gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by the public. The one thing that I’ve become particularly concerned about is sea level rise, where the current IPCC report is going to suggest smaller numbers than the last report, although all of the information that we’re getting in the last year or two points in a very much different direction. Now, in defence of IPCC, their procedure required that they stop getting new inputs more than a year ago and a lot of the data on ice sheet stability has come up in just the last year or two.
KERRY O’BRIEN: What are your particular fears with regard to the melting of the polar ice caps?
JAMES HANSEN: Well, the problem is that the climate system in general has a lot of inertia and that means that it takes time for the changes to begin to occur but then, once they do get under way, it becomes very difficult to stop them and that is true in spades for the ice sheets. If we once begin to disintegrate it will become very difficult, if not impossible, to stop them and we are beginning to see now on both Greenland and west Antarctica disintegration of those ice sheets. They’re both losing ice at a rate of about 150 cubic kilometres per year and that’s still not a huge sea level rise. Sea level rise is now going up about 3.5 centimetres per decade. So that’s more than double what it was 50 years ago.
But it’s still not disastrous; it’s a problem, but it’s not disastrous. But the potential is for a much larger sea level rise. If we get warming of two or three degrees Celsius, then I would expect that both West Antarctica and parts of Greenland would end up in the ocean, and the last time we had an ice sheet disintegrate, sea level went up at a rate of 5 metres in a century, or one metre every 20 years. That is a real disaster, and that’s what we have to avoid. ..
KERRY O’BRIEN: You said just a couple of weeks ago that there should be a moratorium on building coal fired power plants until the technology to capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions is available. But you must know that that’s politically unacceptable in many countries China, America, Australia for that matter, because of coal industry jobs and impact on the economy.
JAMES HANSEN: Well, it’s going to be realised within the next 10 years or so that we have no choice. We’re going to have to bulldoze the old style coal fired power plants. We can burn coal, provided we capture the CO2 and sequester it, and we’re working on technology that would allow us to do that and we should have been working a little harder but, nevertheless, we will have, within five to 10 years, we will have that technology. In the meantime, we should be emphasising energy efficiency so that we don’t need new old style coal fired power plants. We’re just not doing that. Buildings could be 50 per cent more efficient. The architects and engineers will tell you they have the technology to do that, but if it’s not required it’s not likely to happen. ..
(13 Mar 2007)
Climate report warns of drought, disease
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won’t have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.
At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.
Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.
For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.
The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming’s effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials.
(10 March 2007)
Sneak preview of big report: Change is ‘already showing up’
Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
The second report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts massive humanitarian crises.
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Reports that the effects of global warming may be felt by the average person quicker and deeper than previously thought were reflected in a flurry of news coverage over the past week.
(15 March 2007)
