Dire
Warming Report Too Soft, Scientists Say
By Alan Zarembo &
Thomas H. Maugh II
10 April, 2007
Los
Angeles Times
A
new global warming report issued Friday by the United Nations paints
a near-apocalyptic vision of Earth’s future: hundreds of millions
of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape
ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction.Despite
its harsh vision, the report was quickly criticized by some scientists
who said its findings were watered down at the last minute by governments
seeking to deflect calls for action.
“The science got hijacked
by the political bureaucrats at the late stage of the game,” said
John Walsh, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who
helped write a chapter on the polar regions.
Even in its softened form,
the report outlined devastating effects that will strike all regions
of the world and all levels of society. Those without resources to adapt
to the changes will suffer the most, according to the study from the
U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“It’s the poorest
of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous
societies, who are going to be the worst hit,” said Rajendra Pachauri,
chairman of the IPCC, which released the report in Brussels.
The report is the second
of four scheduled to be issued this year by the U.N., which marshaled
more than 2,500 scientists to give their best predictions of the consequences
of a few degrees increase in temperature. The first report, released
in February, said global warming was irreversible but could be moderated
by large-scale societal changes.
That report said with 90%
confidence that the warming was caused by humans, and its conclusions
were widely accepted because of the years of accumulated scientific
data supporting them.
In contrast, the latest report
was more controversial because it tackled the more uncertain issues
of the precise effects of warming and the ability of humans to adapt
to them.
“When you put people
into the equation, people who can adapt and respond and change their
behavior, it adds another layer of complication,” said Gary Yohe,
an economist at Wesleyan University who helped write the report.
But the report is also, in
a sense, a more pointed indictment of the world’s biggest polluters
- the industrialized nations - and a more specific identification of
those who will suffer.
Thus, some nations lobbied
for last-minute changes to the dire predictions. Negotiations led to
deleting some timelines for events, as well as some forecasts on how
many people would be affected on each continent as global temperatures
rose.
An earlier draft, for example,
specified that water would become increasingly scarce for up to a billion
people in Asia if temperatures rose 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - a point
that previous studies have said is likely to be reached by 2100.
A table outlining how various
levels of carbon dioxide emissions corresponded to increasing temperatures
and their effects was also removed.
The actions were seen by
critics as an attempt to ease the pressure on industrialized nations
to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
that are gradually warming the planet.
Several scientists vowed
afterward that they would never participate in the process again because
of the interference.
“Once is enough,”
said Walsh, who was not present during the negotiations in Brussels
but was kept abreast of developments with a steady stream of e-mails
from colleagues. “I was receiving hourly reports that grew increasingly
frustrated.”
The report paints a bleak
picture, noting that the early signs of warming are already here.
Spring is arriving earlier,
with plants blooming weeks ahead of schedule. In the mountains, runoff
begins earlier in the year, shrinking glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas
and the Andes.
Habitats for plants and animals,
on land and in the oceans, are shifting toward the poles.
Nineteen of the 20 hottest
years on record have occurred since 1980, according to previous studies.
The report said that more frequent and more intense heat waves were
“very likely” in the future.
In some places, warming might
seem like a good thing at first.
For example, worldwide food
production is expected to increase with the first few degrees of temperature
rise. For a time, an expanded fertile zone in the higher latitudes could
offset losses in the tropics.
But at a certain point, crops
everywhere will suffer as drought spreads. By mid-century, rising temperatures
and drying soil will turn tropical forest to savanna in eastern Amazonia,
the report predicts.
In North America, snowpack
in the West will decline, causing more floods in the winter and reduced
flows in the summer, increasing competition for water for crops and
people.
California agriculture will
be decimated by the loss of water for irrigation, experts have previously
said.
Water will come more often
around the world in its least welcome forms: storms and floods.
Rising temperatures will
reconfigure coastlines around the world as the oceans rise. The tiny
islands of the South Pacific and the Asian deltas will be overwhelmed
by storm surges.
In the Andes and the Himalayas,
melting glaciers will unleash floods and rock avalanches. But within
a few decades, as the glaciers and snowpack decline, streams will dwindle,
cutting the main water supply to more than a sixth of the world’s
population.
Between 20% and 30% of the
world’s species will disappear if temperatures rise 2.7 to 4.5
degrees, the report said.
Africa will suffer the most,
with up to a quarter of a billion people running short of water by 2020,
and yields from rain-fed crops falling by half in many countries. The
continent could spend at least 5% to 10% of its gross domestic product
to adapt to rising sea levels, the report said.
“Don’t be poor
in a hot country, don’t live in hurricane alley, watch out about
being on the coasts or in the Arctic, and it’s a bad idea to be
on a high mountain,” said Stephen Schneider of Stanford University,
one of the scientists who contributed to the report.
The Bush administration quickly
made it clear that it would not be stampeded by the report into taking
part in the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit emissions
of carbon dioxide. The U.S. withdrew from the protocol in 2001, saying
it was too expensive and did not impose enough controls on developing
nations.
“Each nation sort of
defines their regulatory objectives in different ways to achieve the
greenhouse reduction outcome that they seek,” said Jim Connaughton,
chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, during
a teleconference Friday from Brussels.
Sharon Hays, associate director
of the White House Office of Science and Technology, noted in the same
teleconference that “not all projected impacts are negative.”
Other governments, such as
China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, had already expressed their displeasure
with parts of the report by demanding changes - some of them seemingly
minor in the grand scheme of climate change.
Panel member Yohe said that
China and Saudi Arabia, for example, objected to a sentence that stated
“very high confidence” that many natural systems were already
being affected by regional climate changes, arguing that “very”
should be removed.
After a long deadlock, U.S.
delegates brokered a compromise that removed the reference to confidence
levels.
The U.S. delegation opposed
a section that said parts of North America could suffer “severe”
economic damage from climate change.
Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi said in a prepared statement that political agendas need to be
left behind and quick action taken to cut emissions.
“Global warming is
already underway, but it is not too late to slow it down and reduce
its harmful effects,” she said. “We must base our actions
on the moral imperative and the scientific record, free of political
interference.”
Susanne Moser, a research
scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,
Colo., said the political changes to the report do not diminish the
need for action.
“When you have it this
black and white, it is very hard to deny the reality and continue to
do nothing,” she said. “I don’t know how you do that
if you have a moral bone in your body.”
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Copyright 2007 Los Angeles
Times
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