| 'Fed-Up' Scientists Join Business Leaders In Calling For Climate Action |
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| Thursday, 06 December 2007 | |
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More than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists, in a rare foray into global politics, urged nations assembled at the Bali climate conference Thursday to take dramatic action now to slow global warming because "there is no time to lose." Their petition calls for the world to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in half by 2050. The appeal by 213 of the climate-science elite followed a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders also demanding the 50 percent cut in greenhouse gases. That is what scientists estimate could hold future global warming to a 2-degree Celsius (3.4-degree Fahrenheit) rise over pre-industrial levels, a threshold beyond which they calculate climate change could prove severely damaging - through rising seas, extensive droughts, extreme weather events and other impacts. The European Union has adopted that temperature ceiling as the maximum to be allowed. In the past, many of these scientists have avoided such calls for political action, leaving that to environmental advocacy groups. That dispassionate stance was taken during the release this year of four landmark reports by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But at this point, said England, "what this declaration is about is delivering a clear message. It's got the weight of the scientific community behind it." The signatories include dozens of authors of the IPCC reports and scientists from more than 25 countries. It shows that "the climate science community is essentially fed up," signer Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada, said by telephone. "A lot of us scientists think the problem needs a lot more serious attention than it's getting and the remedies have to be a lot more radical," Richard Seager, a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in the U.S. Delegates here are working on possibly launching two years of negotiations for a new agreement to take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol, requiring modest cuts in industrial nations' emissions of greenhouse gases, expires. The United States is the only industrial nation to reject the Kyoto accord. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, who signed the petition, said, "The time for half-measures and the time for voluntary agreements and the time for arguing about 1 percent here and 1 percent there - those things are no longer relevant." Schmidt noted while scientists have been dismissed by some as unrealistic, the call for a 50 percent emissions cut by business leaders "helps give credence to the idea that it's achievable." Policy analysts, who weren't part of either petition, are split on how meaningful the two petitions are. What's happening is people are agreeing "that the cost of inaction is on the high side and the cost of action is affordable," said physicist and energy consultant Joseph Romm, a policy analyst at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said scientists "are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change." Scientists can lay out scenarios, but it is up to economists to weigh the costs and benefits and many of them say the costs of cutting emissions are higher than the benefits, he said. Granger Morgan, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said he sees "a growing realization among a wide variety of players that we've got to stop talking about this and start some action." But, he added, "I'm not going to hold my breath that we're going to get anything." On the Net: The declaration: www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/ Source: Sapa-AP |
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