BBC Thursday, 12 July, 2001, 09:45 GMT 10:45 UK Global warming 'worse than feared'

Immediate action is needed to protect the Earth from dramatic climate change, a top United Nations scientist has warned.

Dr Robert Watson was speaking as the findings were published of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, warning that global temperatures are rising nearly twice as fast as previously thought.

Dr Watson, who heads the IPCC, dismissed President George W Bush's doubts about the reality of global warming.

"We know enough to say climate change is a serious environmental issue", said Dr Watson.

A host of recent studies have predicted catastrophic consequences for the environment because of global warming.

On Monday, scientists said it would cause large crop failures which would wipe out up to a quarter of the food production in the world's poorest countries.

But the IPCC report has the weight of 3,000 scientists, including the world's most distinguished meteorologists, behind it.

They have given their unqualified backing to the argument that global warming is happening, and at a much faster rate than was expected.

Their prediction is that temperatures will have risen by as much as 5.8C by the end of the century.

And they stress that human activity is responsible for this crisis - that industrial pollution, and the gas emissions it creates, is the worst offender.

President Bush withdrew US support for the Kyoto Protocol, questioning the link between higher temperatures and pollution.

But Dr Watson told the BBC that, while there are some scientific uncertainties about global warming, "science should not be the reason for inaction."

"We could conceivably be over-estimating the effect human activities have on the Earth's climate," he said," but alternatively we could also be under-estimating it."

Dr Watson said it was necessary to start using cost-effective technologies to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.

Key talks

President Bush has argued that it is unfair to expect the US and other industrialised countries to bear responsibility for the problem.

But Dr Watson said most of the greenhouse gas emissions to date had come from the industrialised world.

"Even in the future, per capita emissions from India and China will still be well below those of the US and Europe."

The timing of this report is important.

Politicians from more than 150 countries meet in Germany next week to try to salvage the Kyoto agreement.

They are keen to coax the United States back into the fold.

Indeed, some countries have questioned the point in implementing a treaty which does not have the support of the world's most prolific carbon gas polluter.

But the chairman of the Bonn talks, Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, says the agreement cannot be delayed any longer.

If it is, he says, the Kyoto Protocol really will become nothing more than a dead letter.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Answers

The dead letter office for our area is in Georgia. Send it there.

If we try to control or even reverse global warming, won't the aliens just get mad and do something to us? [There was a movie with aliens trying to alter the atmosphere of earth for themselves.]

Anyone read the book The Last Gasp?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

The history of Earth is one of many climatic catastrophes, long before the burning of "fossil" fuels and such. Hot ages, ice ages, you name it. Comets and meteors, big and bad, have hit here over and over. If the Earth is warming up as fast as some of these guys think it is, then it's beyond our control, some natural process of venting, and we are all just along for the ride, like it or not.

And Barefoot, I don't think the aliens are messing with the thermostat.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Gordon, I don't think it is beyond our control to add a degree of stability or instability, maybe slow things down or speed things up a bit. The "bit" might be enough to sneak another generation or so through the passage. I don't see why we would we are willing to take the risk before we really KNOW the extent of the impact we could have (assuming we are ever capable of that sophisticated a degree of modelling).

I think the recent toxic cloud that reached the U.S. across the Pacific from China is an example. Drought coupled with inappropriate agricultural practices leading to barren landscape leading to massive erosion and then airborne dust which accumulates over China's most polluted regions and then travels enmass to the U.S. We become aware of the health impacts, but this much airborne particulates also affects the weather.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Leaving aside the question of global warming, there's no doubt that carbon monoxide and other emissions do damage to us and the environment, not only in the obvious ways of respiratory diseases (e.g., when some of us get those ozone alerts) and trees killed by acid rain, but also in more insidious ways. Those reasons alone are good enough to work further on emissions reductions.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

I have no problem with taking more care in how we treat our planet. I agree with what you are both saying about some of the excesses we have foisted upon our environment. But global warming? Stopping it with a reduction of fossil fuel use? That's where I start to part company with the "experts" and their theories.

All you have to do is go under the sea and discover the massive volcanic events which pour heat beyond our imagination into the water every minute, fueling the El Nino and other such climate engines. Or above ground, the volcanos which spew ash (pollution?) into the atmosphere and cause tremedous changes in light and temperature. Or earthquakes. Or methane pouring out in incalculable amounts.

That's what's behind our problems, I think, and trying to change it or cool it down is like throwing a cup of water on a forest fire. And incidentally, don't some environmental experts think that some forest fires are good, nature's way of keeping things balanced? Not good for the critter caught in the blaze of course, but good for all the rest who return to a "cleansed" ecosystem?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Yup, far as I'm concerned nobody has convinced me yet that a reduction in energy use will have a measurable effect on any global warming--if there IS global warming. But cleaning up the environment is a no-brainer and should be done where feasible.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Actually, it's not a no-brainer, well, depending on what you mean by "clean up".

I just finished an excellent book, The Environmental Pendulum, by Allan Freeze. He makes a good case that we should be thinking harder about how to prioritize our environmental dollars. He's not saying to spend less, just that the paybacks for the superfund sites isn't there, compared to what could be achieved by prevention and containment and by worrying more about air pollution and less about ground pollution in areas where drinking water supplies aren't affected. Problem is, of course, that we're still paying for the chemical revolution that started in WWII-ish.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001