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World needs to axe greenhouse gases by 80 pct: report
Alister Doyle, Reuters
The world will have to axe greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, more deeply than planned, to have an even chance of curbing global warming in line with European Union goals, researchers said on Thursday.
Even tough long-term curbs foreseen by the EU or California fall short of reductions needed to avert a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) temperature rise over pre-industrial times, seen by the EU as a threshold for “dangerous change”, they said.
“If we are to have a 50 percent chance of meeting a 2 Celsius target we would have to cut global emissions by 80 percent by 2050,” Nathan Rive of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo told Reuters.
Reuters Pictures
“Any delay in implementing emissions reductions will make a 2 degree target practically unreachable,” he and colleague Steffen Kallbekken wrote of findings to be published in the journal Climatic Change.
The EU reckons that there would be dangerous disruptions to the climate such as ever more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas beyond a 2 C ceiling. Temperatures already rose by about 0.7 Celsius in the 20th century.
(19 April 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
Climate Change Will Affect Women More Severely Than Men
Julia Whitty, Mother Jones
…Though the IUCN (World Conservation Union) has celebrated by releasing a disturbing report on global warming predicting that the physical, economic, social, and cultural impacts of global warming will jeopardize women far more then men. Just as Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disproportionately affected women far more then men.
The report, Gender and Climate Change (available here as a PDF), concludes that women are more severely affected by climate change and natural disasters because of their social roles and because of discrimination and poverty. To make matters worse, they’re also underrepresented in decision-making about climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, and, most critically, discussions and decisions about adaptation and mitigation.
(8 March 2007)
Australia’s drought linked to global warming
Madeleine Coorey, AFP
An unprecedented drought that has withered Australia’s major food production zone could be a taste of things to come as global warming ramps up, experts said Friday.
Prime Minister John Howard, who said the six-year drought was so extreme the country’s prime farmland could be left without irrigation water this year, has refused to blame the crisis directly on climate change.
“I recognise the ongoing debate about the link between the two things and I don’t vary from that,” he said Thursday, announcing that the country faced an “unprecedentedly dangerous” drought crisis.
But scientists said the link between climate change and the drying up of rivers in the vast Murray-Darling Basin, which threatens the survival of Australia’s prime agricultural zone, was strengthening.
(20 April 2007)
Global warming swelling insurance risk
John Heilprin, Associated Press
The insurer of last resort, the government faces a potential payout of at least $919 billion under a worst-case scenario of flood and crop losses due to global warming, congressional investigators say.
That total has grown from about $209 billion in 1980, and could be even higher today because it is based on two-year-old data, according to a report. It recommends an analysis of the potential long-term implications of climate change for federal flood and crop insurance programs.
“We’re looking at more floods, droughts, pestilence, fires and storms – all carrying dire economic consequences,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Thursday.
Lieberman and Maine Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), the committee’s top Republican, requested the report from the
Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress.
(19 April 2007)
The Nation special issue on climate crisis
Among the articles from the Nation’s May 7 issue on “Surviving the Climate Crisis”:
Don’t Bet on Offsets (“Erasing your ‘carbon footprint’ is tougher than it seems”)
James Hansen: Why We Can’t Wait (“If Congress follows these five
suggestions, we could solve the problem of global warming.”)
Cooler Elites (“Can the ruling classes save the world from global warming?”)
