Global warming is human-caused, and will likely lead to rising sea levels and fierce storms over the next decades and centuries, according to the U.N. climate change panel.
Credit: iStockphoto
PARIS: Humans are to blame for global warming and its effects could be unstoppable for centuries to come, according to the U.N. climate change panel.
A report released on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the world's premier scientific authority on global warming - predicted increasingly intense storms, heat waves and heavy rains in the decades to come.
The Earth's average surface temperature will likely increase between 1.8°C and 4°C and sea levels will rise between 18 cm and 59 cm by 2100, the report said.
The impact of pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will cause serious climate disruptions "for more than a millennium," the IPCC said. The exhaustive study by 2,500 scientists from more than 100 countries sounded alarms about the impact of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, and is designed to help policy makers.
Sea rises, the report notes, are predicted to shrink both the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps, and in some projections "Arctic late summer ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century."
It is likely that that future tropical cyclones - similar to the one that devastated New Orleans - will become more intense, with large peak wind speeds and heavy precipitation, it said.
Britain's environment minister, David Miliband, said the report confirmed "concerns that the window of opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change is closing more quickly than previously thought."
Environmental pressure groups responded by calling for urgent international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Friends of the Earth said the world now faced a "crisis," and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conservation group said governments must now "slash emissions". Greenpeace warned the "window for action is narrowing fast".
"The IPCC report embodies an extraordinary scientific consensus that climate change is already upon us and that human activities are the cause," said WWF International director general James Leape.
"It is a clarion call to governments to act urgently to slash emissions," he added in a statement.
Jan Kowalzig, climate and energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said, "The IPCC report scientifically confirms the extent of this man-made crisis already hitting people around the world and makes bleak predictions for the future." He added: "We can no longer afford to ignore growing and compelling warnings from the world's leading experts."
WWF said governments must ensure the next U.N. Climate Conference, set for Bali, Indonesia, in December, is a success. Hans Verolme, head of the WWF global climate change programme, said it must set a "tight time frame for negotiating new cuts in emissions within a next Kyoto Agreement that will also promote clean investments."
Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner, Stephanie Tunmore, called the IPCC report a "screaming siren" of a warning. "The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the more precarious the future looks," Tunmore said.
are we to balme for everything
to much of anything is not good
Lets do what ever we can do as a human to save MOTHER EARTH!!!
Global warming might cause not only because of us might be some other factors also....But lets come together and do what we can do to save the mother EARTH!!! This might increase the earths age than what it is predicted or expected as of today...!!!
Global warming is not our fault alone
Global warming is our fault alone?
In recent years, the scenario of future global environment is haunting the man as the present environmental changes( e.g. global warming) pose considerable danger to his own existence and environment. He is presently struggling to understand as to what will be the nature and extent of these changes in the next hundred years.
Are we responsible for this changes - to some extent yes. But we can't totally blame mankind for these changes. If we analyze the back geological imprints recorded on the rocks we find that our earth passed through different global warming (greater than today) and global cooling (ice age) phases which killed off a broad spectrum of faunas at all latitudes. The consequence of the mass extinction was that there were only few survivors among those, which made come back after the crisis was over. Earlier too there was sea level rise greater than today. So its not recent phenomenon.
The examples of changes of global environment and the associated mass extinction in the geological past clearly indicate that ecosystem is quite sensitive to the environment changes and has capacity to re-grow.
Today climate change is natural but is being triggered by the human beings by different ways. If man made factors are added to the natural changing environments the ecosystem may be damaged beyond repair. So human beings can not be blamed alone for present global warming.
Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi
Geologist
Ranchi, India.
Rch_nitishp@sancharnet.in
ur wrong
global warming is our fault ddduuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
no ur wrong
global warming isint all our fault ! the sun warms the earth and the balance sometimes gets off. it is though only partly our fault because we went overboard w/ machines and not recycleing but it is not all our fault.
duuuuuuh
then do something
global warming
there are many debates as to whether humans are to blame when it comes to global warming or not. think about it this way.
if there were no factories, no smoke coming out of cars, etc do you think we would have the problem of global warming. of course, im not sugessting that we cut back on all of these things but we could help our environment in a lot of ways.
use public transport instead of your cars once in a while, walk even. one thing i am happy about is that australia has now joined the kyoto protocol. maybe we'll see a change now!!
no no no no no!
global warming is a natural phenomenon, it would happen even if humans werent here. a cow releases just as much methane into the air in one day as a car does...now, picture the world with tons of cows, because there are no humans to slauter them for meat and leather and other goods, what about all that methane straight from thier butts?! its not just us, how do you know the suns rays arent getting stronger by the decade? or every year we orbit around the sun, we are moving closer to it?
no no no no no!
global warming is a natural phenomenon, it would happen even if humans werent here. a cow releases just as much methane into the air in one day as a car does...now, picture the world with tons of cows, because there are no humans to slauter them for meat and leather and other goods, what about all that methane straight from thier butts?! its not just us, how do you know the suns rays arent getting stronger by the decade? or every year we orbit around the sun, we are moving closer to it?
global warming is not all our fault!!!!!!
thats ridicules its a natural phenomana. just 20 or30 years ago everyone was saying were gonna go spiraling into an ice age!!! and that never happenend!!! yall have no proof but we have plenty of proof to back up the fact that it is a natural phenomana! and that it will stop in a matter of years and damages wont be permanant!!!!!