stephanie
11-17-2007, 11:50 PM
Oh dear....We are DOOMED...nice knowing ya all:cheers2:
Report Lays Out Stark Choices to Avoid the Deaths of Species
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007; Page A10
The world will have to end its growth of carbon emissions within seven years and become mostly free of carbon-emitting technologies in about four decades to avoid killing as many as a quarter of the planet's species from global warming, according to top United Nations' scientists.
The stark choices laid out yesterday by the agency's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describe the daunting task if the world is to avoid the consequences of a planet heated up by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) since 2000.
Rajendra Pachauri, who leads the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won this year's Nobel Peace opens the lid of a paella, a typical dish of Valencia, cooked by Greenpeace activist using a solar kitchen outside the City of the Arts and Sciences complex in Valencia, Spain. Friday, Nov. 16, 2007. Working until dawn, negotiators on Friday concluded a policy guide for governments on global warming that declares climate change is here and is getting worse, one of its authors said. The brief Summary for Policymakers, will be released Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The panel, which distilled research from about 2,500 scientists, avoided conclusions about how much global warming is too much.
"The scientists now have done their work. I call on political leaders to do theirs," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said upon formally receiving the report yesterday in Valencia, Spain.
But the tables laid out in the report describe mounting grim consequences for each degree of atmospheric heating of the planet and the difficult steps that must be taken to avoid even the worst of those consequences.
To avoid heating the globe by the minimum possible, an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the world's spiraling growth in greenhouse gas emissions must end no later than 2015, the report said, and must start to drop quickly after that peak. By 2050, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 to 85 percent, according to the estimates.
That would require a drastic reworking of industrial processes, transportation, agricultural practices and even the buildings people live in, according to the report's calculations.
"We may have already overshot that target," said David Karoly, one member of the core team that wrote the report. Current emissions already are nearing the limit required in 2015 to limit the warming to 2 degrees Celsius, he said in an interview from Valencia.
read the rest if our world hasn't ended by the time you get around to it at...:laugh2:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/17/AR2007111700566.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Report Lays Out Stark Choices to Avoid the Deaths of Species
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007; Page A10
The world will have to end its growth of carbon emissions within seven years and become mostly free of carbon-emitting technologies in about four decades to avoid killing as many as a quarter of the planet's species from global warming, according to top United Nations' scientists.
The stark choices laid out yesterday by the agency's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describe the daunting task if the world is to avoid the consequences of a planet heated up by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) since 2000.
Rajendra Pachauri, who leads the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won this year's Nobel Peace opens the lid of a paella, a typical dish of Valencia, cooked by Greenpeace activist using a solar kitchen outside the City of the Arts and Sciences complex in Valencia, Spain. Friday, Nov. 16, 2007. Working until dawn, negotiators on Friday concluded a policy guide for governments on global warming that declares climate change is here and is getting worse, one of its authors said. The brief Summary for Policymakers, will be released Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The panel, which distilled research from about 2,500 scientists, avoided conclusions about how much global warming is too much.
"The scientists now have done their work. I call on political leaders to do theirs," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said upon formally receiving the report yesterday in Valencia, Spain.
But the tables laid out in the report describe mounting grim consequences for each degree of atmospheric heating of the planet and the difficult steps that must be taken to avoid even the worst of those consequences.
To avoid heating the globe by the minimum possible, an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the world's spiraling growth in greenhouse gas emissions must end no later than 2015, the report said, and must start to drop quickly after that peak. By 2050, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 to 85 percent, according to the estimates.
That would require a drastic reworking of industrial processes, transportation, agricultural practices and even the buildings people live in, according to the report's calculations.
"We may have already overshot that target," said David Karoly, one member of the core team that wrote the report. Current emissions already are nearing the limit required in 2015 to limit the warming to 2 degrees Celsius, he said in an interview from Valencia.
read the rest if our world hasn't ended by the time you get around to it at...:laugh2:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/17/AR2007111700566.html?hpid=moreheadlines