[NYTr] A world dying, but can we unite to save it?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Independent - Nov 18, 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3172144.ece

A world dying, but can we unite to save it?

Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming, says a devastating
new climate report. 

by Geoffrey Lean in Valencia

Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution
that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists
agreed yesterday. The process  thought to be the most profound change
in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years  is expected both
to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate
change worse.

The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a
new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with
former US vice president Al Gore.

Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world's top scientists and their
governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national
governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world's
species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that
harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.

United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch
of the report in this ancient Spanish city, told The Independent on
Sunday that he found the "quickening pace" of global warming "very
frightening".

And, with unusual outspokenness for a UN leader, he said he "looked
forward" to both the United States and China  the world's two biggest
polluters  "playing a more constructive role" in vital new negotiations
on tackling climate change that open in Indonesia next month.

The new IPCC report, which is designed to give impetus to the
negotiations, highlights the little-known acidification of the oceans,
first reported in this newspaper more than three years ago. It concludes
that emissions of carbon dioxide  the main cause of global warming  have
already increased the acidity of ocean surface water by 30 per cent, and
threaten to treble it by the end of the century.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), said yesterday: "The report has put a spotlight on a
threat to the marine environment that the world has hardly yet realised.
The threat is immense as it can fundamentally alter the life of the
seas, reducing the productivity of the oceans, while reinforcing global
warming."

Scientists have found that the seas have already absorbed about half of
all the carbon dioxide emitted by humanity since the start of the
industrial revolution, a staggering 500 billion tons of it. This has so
far helped slow global warming  which would have accelerated even faster
if all this pollution had stayed in the atmosphere, already causing
catastrophe  but at an increasingly severe cost.

The gas dissolves in the oceans to make dilute carbonic acid, which is
increasingly souring the naturally alkali seawater. This, in turn, mops
up calcium carbonate, a substance normally plentiful in the seas, which
corals use to build their reefs, and marine creatures use to make the
protective shells they need to survive. These include many of the
plankton that form the base of the food chain on which all fish and
other marine animals depend.

As the waters are growing more acid this process is decreasing, with
incalculable consequences for the life of the seas, and for the
fisheries on which a billion of the world's people depend for protein.
Every single species that uses calcium in this way, that has so far
been studied, has been found to be affected. And the seas are most acid
near the surface, where most of their life is concentrated.

A report by the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body,
concludes that, as a result, of the pollution, the world's oceans are
probably now more acidic that they have ever been in "hundreds of
millennia", and that even if emissions stopped now, the waters would
take "tens of thousands of years to return to normal".

Professor Ulf Reibesell of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Sciences in
Kiel, Germany's leading expert on the process, concludes in an issue of
UNEP's magazine Our Planet, to be published next month, that, if it
continues to the levels predicted by yesterday's report for the end of
the century, the seas will reach a condition unprecedented in the last
20 million years.

He recalls how something similar happened when a comet hit Mexico's
Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, blasting massive amounts of
calcium sulphate into the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid, which in
turn caused the extinction of corals and virtually all shell-building
species.

"Two million years went by before corals reappeared in the fossil
record," he says, adding that it took "a further 20 million years"
before the diversity of species that use calcium returned to its former
levels.

Scientists add that, as the seas become more acidic, they will be less
able to absorb carbon dioxide, causing more of it to stay in the
atmosphere to speed up global warming. Research is already uncovering
some signs that the oceans' ability to mop up the gas is diminishing.
Environmentalists point out that the increasing acidification of the
oceans would in itself provide ample reason to curb emissions of carbon
dioxide from burning fossil fuels and felling forests even if the
dwindling band of sceptics were right and the gas was not warming up the
planet.

But yesterday's cautiously worded report, which was agreed by the US
government, also provides ample evidence that climate change is well
under way, and is accelerating. It concludes that the warming is now
"unequivocal" and "evident from observations of increases in global
average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice,
and rising global average sea level".

It adds: "Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years in
the instrumental record of global surface temperature". It goes on:
"Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that
many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes,
particularly temperature increases."

If humanity were not affecting the climate, it concludes, declines in
the sun's activity and increased eruptions from volcanoes  which throw
huge amounts of dust in the air that screen out sunlight  would have
been likely to "have produced cooling" of the planet.

But emissions of all the "greenhouse gas" pollutants that cause global
warming increased 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004 alone, it reports,
adding that levels of carbon dioxide, the most important one, in the
atmosphere now "exceed by far" anything that the Earth has experienced
in the past 650,000 years. And it goes on to conclude that "continued
greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further
warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the
21st century."

It makes a host of specific predictions for every continent (for
examples, see graphic) and warns that "impacts" could be "abrupt" or
"irreversible". One example of an irreversible impact is an expected
extinction of between 20 and 30 per cent of all the world's species of
animals and plants even at relatively moderate levels of warming. If
the climate heats further, it adds, extinctions could rise to 40 to 70
per cent of species.

The IPCC scientists and governments say that they are also more
concerned about "increases in droughts, heatwaves and floods" as the
climate warms. They believe that the damage to the world's economy
would be even greater than they had previously predicted, and were even
more certain that the poor and elderly in both rich and poor countries
would suffer most.

Yet the report also concludes that, while some climate change is now
inevitable, its worst effects could be avoided with straightforward
measures at little cost if only governments would take action. It says
that the job can be done by using "technologies that are either
currently available or expected to be commercialised in coming
decades". It could be done at a cost of slowing global growth by only a
tenth of a percentage point a year, and might even increase it.

The missing element, virtually everyone agrees, is political will from
governments. Next month they meet in Bali to start negotiations on a new
treaty to replace the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, which
run out in 2012.

The timetable is desperately tight; time lags in the process of getting
a new treaty ratified by the world's governments means that it will
have to be agreed by the end of 2009  and there is no sign of anything
on the horizon.

Yet the treaty will have to go far beyond the protocol in order to put
the whole world on track rapidly to reduce emissions if the world is to
achieve the pollution cuts that the scientists say will be needed to
avoid catastrophe. And it will have to ensure rapid action. Dr Rajendra
Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman, yesterday repeated a consensus among
experts that the world as a whole will have to start radical reductions
within eight years if there is to be any hope of preventing dangerous
climate change.

Stephanie Tunmore of Greenpeace International said: "It is clear from
this report that we are gambling with the future of the planet  and the
stakes are high. This document sets out a compelling case for early
action on climate change."

The UN Secretary-General, agreed. The effects of climate change have
become "so severe and so sweeping" he said "that only urgent, global
action will do. There is no time to waste."

Mr Steiner called the report "the most essential reading for every
person on the planet who cares about the future". He added: "The hard
science has been distilled along with evidence of the social and
economic consequences of global warming, but also the economic
rationale and opportunities for action now. While the science will
continue to evolve and be refined, we now have the compelling blueprint
for action and, in many ways, the price tag for failure  from
increasing acidification of the oceans to the likely extinction of
economically important biodiversity."

And Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change  the parent treaty to the Kyoto Protocol  told the IoS
that reaching agreement was "incredibly urgent".

He pointed out that the world would replace 40 per cent of its power
generation capacity in the next five to 10 years and that China is
already building one or two coal- fired power stations a week. Those
installations would last for decades  and the nations that built them
would be reluctant to demolish them any earlier  so that unless the
world rapidly changed direction it would be all the more difficult to
avoid climate change running out of control.

Sticking poin: It is crucial to get the US and China on board

Getting agreement on a new treaty to tackle climate change hangs on
resolving an "after you, Claude" impasse between the United States and
China, the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, the main cause of
global warming.

China insists  with other key developing countries like India and South
Africa  that the United States must move first to clean up. It points
out that, because of the disparity in populations, every American is
responsible for emitting much more of the gas than each Chinese. But the
US refuses to join any new treaty unless China also accepts
restrictions.

There is hope of breaking the logjam. Chinese leaders know their country
would be severely affected by global warming, and have done more than is
generally realised to tackle it, not least by rapidly expanding
renewable energy. The US will have a new leader by the time
negotiations are completed, and even President Bush is backtracking, at
least rhetorically.

Yesterday UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he was optimistic. "I
look forward," he said, with a hint of steel, "to seeing the United
States and China playing a more constructive role in the coming
negotiations."

Arctic

Greenland ice sheet will virtually completely disappear, raising sea
levels by over 30 feet, submerging coastal cities, entire island nations
and vast areas of low-lying countries like Bangladesh

Latin America

The Amazon rainforest will become dry savannah as rising temperatures
and falling water levels kill the trees, stoke forest fires and kill off
wildlife

North America

California and the grain-producing Midwest will dry out as snows in the
Rockies decrease, depriving these areas of summer water

Australia

The Great Barrier Reef will die. Species loss will occur by 2020 as
corals fail to adapt to warmer waters. On land, drought will reduce
harvests

Europe

Winter sports suffer as less snow falls in the Alps and other mountains;
up to three-fifths of wildlife dies out. Drought in Mediterranean area
hits tourism

Africa

Harvests could be cut by up to half in some countries by 2020, greatly
increasing the threat of famine. Between 75 million and 250 million
people are expected to be short of water within the next 30 years