Melting
Ice Can Submerge Major Cities
By Paul Brown
14 July, 2004
The Guardian
There
is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than for 55m years, enough
to melt all the ice on the planet and submerge cities like London, New
York and New Orleans, Sir David King, the government's chief scientific
adviser has warned.
Speaking on his
return from Moscow, where he has been acting as the prime minister's
"unofficial envoy" to persuade the Russians to ratify the
Kyoto protocol to fight climate change, Sir David said the most recent
science bore out the worst predictions.
An ice core 3km
deep from the Antarctic had a record of the climate for 800,000 years
and showed the direct relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere and warm and cold periods for the planet.
Critical in climate
records is the quantity of ice at the poles and in glaciers. Records
show that at the peak of the ice age 12,000 years ago, the sea was 150
metres below where it is now. "You might think it is not wise,
since we are currently melting ice so fast, to have built our big cities
on the edge of the sea where it is now obvious they cannot remain.
"On current
trends, cities like London, New York and New Orleans will be among the
first to go.
"Ice melting
is a relatively slow process but is speeding up. When the Greenland
ice cap goes, the sea level will rise six to seven metres, when Antarctica
melts it will be another 110 metres," he said.
Records of the 3km
deep Antarctic ice core showed that during ice ages the carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere was around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during
warm periods reached around 270 ppm, before sinking back down again
for another ice age. That pattern had been repeated many times in that
period but had now been broken because of the intervention of man.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 360 ppm in the 1990s and
now was up to 379 ppm and increasing at the rate of 3 ppm a year - reaching
a level not seen for 55m years when there was no ice on the planet because
the atmosphere was too warm.
"I am sure
that climate change is the biggest problem that civilisation has had
to face in 5,000 years," he concluded.
Sir David, who is
also to visit China and Japan, was speaking at the launch of a scientific
expedition to Cape Farewell in the Arctic, which aims to raise awareness
of climate change in students. It will also study the oceans' currents
with the help of Southampton University, particularly the fate of the
gulf stream which warms northern Europe but is slowing down because
of excess fresh water in the north Atlantic caused by ice melt.
Dr King described
how the ice caps like those on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, had been
continuous for hundreds of thousands of years and survived through successive
warm periods but were now expected to disappear in 30 to 40 years.
He said that the
realisation of the scale of the crisis was what prompted him to say
in January that climate change was a bigger threat than global terrorism.
"We are moving from a warm period into the first hot period that
man has ever experienced since he walked on the planet."
He said the heatwave
of last summer in which 25,000 Europeans died had killed more people
than terrorism, yet had not been given anything like the same level
of attention.
The prime minister
had charged him with talking to governments ahead of the G8 summit to
convince them of the urgency of action on climate change, of research
and development of renewables. He warned of the slow response of the
climate system and said we were already doomed to 30 or 40 years of
climate heating because of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere,
hence the need to multiply effective flood defences such as the Thames
barrier.
Sir David said because
there was no ice on the planet 55m years ago, it was impossible to tell
how much carbon dioxide there was in the atmosphere but it was probably
only slightly more than "we are currently heading towards".
Sir David was backed
up last night by Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, speaking
at the Green Alliance about the value of the EU's campaign to fight
climate change.
"Climate change
is the predominant global environmental issue where European leadership
is vital," she said.
"But, of course,
we need to persuade others to come with us, and we need to inject new
momentum into international discussions on climate change.
"Above all,
we also need to demonstrate that countries do not have to choose between
their environmental and economic aspirations, to forfeit one or the
other, but that these aspirations can not only be compatible but mutually
reinforcing."
She said that the
government had set ambitious targets for 2010 and beyond for virtually
every big environmental issue.
But there needed
to be a greater emphasis on assessing progress and identifying action
needed to deliver existing commitments.
There also needed
to be more consistent implementation of EU rules across the union, she
said.
Guardian Unlimited
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004