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| Monday, 31 January 2005 |
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"Dangerous" global warming possible by 2026-WWF OSLO, Sunday (Reuters) World temperatures could surge in just two decades to a threshold likely to trigger dangerous disruptions to the earth's climate, the WWF environmental group said on Sunday. It said the Arctic region was warming fastest, threatening the livelihoods of indigenous hunters by thawing the polar ice-cap and driving species like polar bears towards extinction by the end of the century. "If nothing is done, the earth will have warmed by 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060," the WWF said in a report. Few scientists have estimated such an early date for a 2.0C rise, seen by the WWF as a threshold that may spur "dangerous" warming, raising sea levels and causing more floods, storms or droughts and driving some species to extinction. World temperatures have already risen by about 0.7C since 1750 with most scientists blaming a build-up of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars. The European Union and many other environmental groups say that governments should cap emissions of greenhouse gases to try to prevent a 2.0C temperature rise. The United States has rejected binding caps under the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol. At some point, some scientists fear that rising temperatures could cause a runaway warming, for instance by melting permafrost in Siberia that could in turn release deposits of heat-trapping methane to the atmosphere. "Time is running out to avoid a two degree rise," said Mark New, a climate expert at England's Oxford University who made the 2026-60 projections in the report commissioned by the WWF. He told Reuters his study was based on a review of climate models used by the U.N. climate panel in its latest 2001 report. Another international report last week said that rising temperatures were a ticking time bomb for the climate. |
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