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The
Guardian (London) March 18,
2014
Read the whole story
here:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/18/climate-change-world-risk-irreversible-changes-scientists-aaas
Climate
change is putting world at risk
of irreversible changes,
scientists warn
AAAS makes
rare policy intervention urging
US to act swiftly to reduce
carbon emissions and lower risks
of climate catastrophe
By Suzanne
Goldenberg
The world
is at growing risk of
“abrupt, unpredictable and
potentially irreversible
changes” because of a
warming climate, America’s
premier scientific society warned
on Tuesday.
In a rare
intervention into a policy
debate, the American Association
for the Advancement of Scientists
urged Americans to act swiftly to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions
– and lower the risks of
leaving a climate catastrophe for
future generations.
“As
scientists, it is not our role to
tell people what they should
do,” the AAAS said in a new
report, What we know.
“But
we consider it our responsibility
as professionals to ensure, to
the best of our ability, that
people understand what we know:
human-caused climate change is
happening, we face risks of
abrupt, unpredictable and
potentially irreversible changes,
and responding now will lower the
risks and costs of taking
action.”
The United
Nations’ climate science
panel, the IPCC, will gather in
Yokohama, Japan next week to
release the second in a series of
blockbuster reports, this time
outlining how a changing climate
is affecting rainfall and heat
waves, sea level and the oceans,
fisheries and food
security.
But the
AAAS scientists said they were
releasing their own assessment
ahead of time because they were
concerned that Americans still
failed to appreciate the gravity
of climate change.
Despite
“overwhelming
evidence”, the AAAS said
Americans had failed to
appreciate the seriousness of the
risks posed by climate change,
and had yet to mobilise at a pace
and scale needed to avoid a
climate catastrophe.
The
scientists said they were hoping
to persuade Americans to look at
climate change as an issue of
risk management. The society said
it plans to send out scientists
on speaking tours to try to begin
a debate on managing those
risks.
The report
noted the climate is warming at
almost unprecedented
pace.
“The
rate of climate change now may be
as fast as any extended warming
period over the past 65 million
years, and it is projected to
accelerate in the coming
decades,”
An 8F rise
– among the most likely
scenarios could make once rare
extreme weather events –
100-year floods, droughts and
heat waves – almost annual
occurrences, the scientists
said.
Other
sudden systemic changes could lie
ahead – such as large scale
collapse of the Antarctic and
Greenland ice sheets, collapse of
part of the Gulf Stream, loss of
the Amazon rain forest, die-off
of coral reefs, and mass
extinctions.
“There
is a risk of abrupt,
unpredictable and potentially
irreversible changes in the
earth’s climate system with
massively disruptive
impacts,” the report
said.
The risks
of such catastrophes would only
grow over time – unless
there was action to cut
emissions, the scientists
said.
“The
sooner we make a concerted effort
to curtail the burning of fossil
fuels as our primary energy
source and releasing the C02 to
the air, the lower our risk and
cost will be.”
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