Top Scientists Say Action Would Mute Climate Warming Effects

Top climate scientists have produced a report for the UN that says immediate action now to curb greenhouse gass emissions and manmade global warming would mute the effects of climate change for billions in years to come.

The report, due for release on April 6, foresees ever worsening damage to the planet as temperatures gain, including rising seas that could swamp low-lying Pacific island states or declining crop yields that could mean hunger for millions.

"The longer we go without action (to curb greenhouse gases) the more likely it is that some of the big feedbacks will kick in," Richard Betts, manager of the climate impacts research team at the British Met Office and Hadley Center.

"We can make a big difference by either choosing a low emissions scenario or a high emissions scenario," said Gunnar Myhre, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

Both were among lead authors of a U.N. climate report in February, based on the work of 2,500 scientists, that laid out scenarios of temperature rises of 1.1-6.4 Celsius (2 to 11.5 Fahrenheit) by 2100 over 1990 levels.

In the scenarios, the biggest temperature gain comes if the world stays dependent on fossil fuels, with 70 percent of energy in 2100 from sources such as coal and gas, and sharply raises greenhouse gas emissions.

The scenario with the smallest temperature gain, below about 3 Celsius (5.4 F), assumes that carbon emissions will dip by 2100 by when the world will get about half its energy from renewable sources.

The draft report, due for release in Brussels, will build on the first part and lay out the regional impacts of climate change, such as a drying of the Amazon basin or a sharp contraction of vast Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers in Asia.

In the draft, a temperature rise above about 3C could mean a sharp expansion in water shortages, for 1.1 to 3.2 billion people.

At about that level potential crop yields would also start to fall in all parts of the world after briefly benefiting farmers in some regions away from the tropics.

And above about a 4 Celsius (7.2 F) gain, one scenario sees a potential extinction of about 45 percent of Amazonian tree species.

Ironically, this report is announced on the same day that NASA's top climate scientist is telling a Congressional hearing that he and his colleagues have been censored and repressed by the Bush administration. Dr. Jim Henson told a panel today that the White House has attempted to stop the bad news by stopping the measurements and that they should consider changing NASA's mission 'to understand and protect our home planet' to 'protect special interests' backside'.

At the same hearing, Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, admitted that he made 181 changes in three scientific reports on climate change ``to align these communications with the administration's stated policy'' on climate change. Shortly after Cooney's changes came to light in 2005, he left the Bush administration for a position with Exon Mobil Corp.

The UN report should pour water on the chief climate change naysayer's argument that action would harm the American economy. No amount of short-term slowing in the economy could possibly be as serious as the economic and humanitarian harm that will be done if billions are without water, crops failing and major cities like San Antonio collapsing back into desert.

The truth is, as Dr. Henson said today, that the naysayers are being manipulated by vested interests to guard their own backsides...and profits.