Global Warming Threat Worsening, Report Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HANGHAI, Jan. 22 - In the most emphatic warning yet about the danger of global
warming, scientists from 99 nations meeting here issued a report today that sharply
increased projected climate change blamed on air pollution and warned of drought and
other disasters.
The report, which could spur stalled world negotiations on curbing greenhouse gas
emissions, said global temperatures could rise by as much as 10.5 degrees over the
next century. By comparison, the earth's temperature rose about 9 degrees since the
last ice age.
"This adds impetus for governments of the world to find ways to live up to their
commitments" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, said Dr. Robert T. Watson,
chairman of the United Nations-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
which organized the meeting in Shanghai.
International talks ended in November without agreement on how to carry out a 1997
agreement by industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent
below 1990 levels by 2010.
The Shanghai report, meant to be the most comprehensive study to date on global
warming, says new evidence shows more clearly than ever that temperature increases
are caused mostly by pollution, not by changes in the sun or other natural factors.
"The rate of climate change this century is expected to be greater than it has been
in the past 10,000 years," Sir John T. Houghton, co- chairman of the Shanghai meeting
and former head of Britain's weather agency, said.
The report is the one of the most authoritative pieces of evidence yet to support
warnings that greenhouse emissions from industry, power plants and vehicles threaten
to disrupt global climate and ecosystems by causing the atmosphere to trap more of
the sun's energy. The findings were unanimously approved by the roughly 150
scientists and 80 members of environmental and industry groups attending the meeting.
Most of the contents of the report had not changed since last October, when a draft
was distributed to governments and some reporters. But scientists involved in writing
it said some points were made even more strongly in the final version. In particular,
it concludes that new evidence shows that "most of the observed warming" in recent
decades has come from gas releases from human activities.
Rising temperatures could lead to drastic shifts in weather, scientists at the
meeting said. They said drought could strike farming areas, while melting glaciers
could raise sea levels, flooding densely populated coastal areas of China, Egypt and
other countries.
The Shanghai conference was the start of a series of meetings under United Nation
auspices to update evidence for climate negotiators. Other gatherings will focus on
the social and economic costs of global warming and how to reduce it. The series ends
in April with the release of a huge report in Nairobi, Kenya.
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Macdonald Stainsby
Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion.
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