"Global warming could bring hunger, melt Himalayas
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming could cause more hunger in Africa and melt most Himalayan glaciers by the 2030s, according to a draft U.N. report due on Friday which also warns that the poorest nations are likely to suffer most.
The U.N. climate panel, giving the most authoritative study on the regional impact of climate change since 2001, also predicts more heatwaves in countries such as the United States, and damage to corals including Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
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Tourists enjoy the view of Mt. Everest from a hotel window in Shyangboche, Nepal in this April 1, 2006 file photo. Global warming could cause more hunger in Africa and melt most Himalayan glaciers by the 2030s, according to a draft U.N. report due on Friday which also warns that the poorest nations are likely to suffer most. (REUTERS/Gopal Chitrakar) |
"We are talking about a potentially catastrophic set of developments,"
Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, said of the likely impact of rising temperatures, widely blamed on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
"Even a half metre (20 inch) rise in sea levels would have catastrophic effects in Bangladesh and some island states," he told Reuters.
Scientists and officials from more than 100 countries meet in Belgium from Monday to review and approve a 21-page summary for policymakers in the report amid disputes on some findings, including on how far rising temperatures may contribute to spreading disease.
Among the gloomy forecasts, the report predicts that glaciers in the Himalayas, the world's highest mountain range, will melt away, affecting hundreds of millions of people.
"If current warming rates are maintained, Himalayan glaciers could decay at very rapid rates, shrinking from the present 500,000 square kilometres to 100,000 square kilometres by 2030s," according to a draft technical summary.
And disruptions are likely to be felt hardest in poor nations, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where millions more could go hungry because of damage to farming and water supplies.
BENEFITS
Still, some nations will see some benefits, according to the draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which draws on work by 2,500 scientists.
Global farm potential might increase with a rise of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in temperatures, before sinking worldwide, it says. Crops might grow better in nations far from the tropics such as Canada, Russia, New Zealand or Scandinavia.
But warming will hit rich nations in other ways. The Mediterranean region might become arid. In the United States, rising seas and storm surges could "severely affect transportation along the Gulf, Atlantic and Northern coasts", it says.
The United Nations reckons the report, together with one in February that concluded it was more than 90 percent likely that recent warming had a predominantly human cause, will add pressure on governments to do more to head off damaging change.
"We've passed the tipping point," Steiner said, adding that the public, governments and businesses seemed convinced that global warming was a major threat and not some vague theory about which scientists disagreed.
"It's no longer about whether (climate change) is happening but about how we deal with it," he said.
Even so, talks on a global treaty to extend the Kyoto Protocol on restricting greenhouse gases after 2012 are stalled. Of the world's top emitters -- the United States, China, Russia and India -- only Russia is bound by caps under Kyoto.
Talks in Brussels are likely to last long and late, according to James McCarthy, professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University who was co-chair the last time the IPCC made a similar report in 2001.
He predicted disagreements would be overcome. "I think it would be very unlikely that final agreement would not be reached in Brussels," he said. "It would be unprecedented."
Source: Reuters---The Star"
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I believe that the humankind has pushed the nature too far off the line and that it may be a little late to correct what has been done to the mother earth. Instead of spending resources into exploring clean energy, humans have been manipulating the crude oil resource and looking into its lucrative returns. Some nations tried hard to ignore the aspect of the existence of the new source of energy which could overcome the problem of carbon emission in generating energy. That's because some of the "very wealthy" nations in the world today depend highly on national income generated from the sales of crude oil to the world. For instance, if the UN imposes a strict ban from exploring new resource for petroleum or crude oil, what would countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq or even Brunei (they can always opt to join Malaysia with open hands...) eat? I wonder...
However, these are done at the expense of the nature. Now, humans are made to see that it's no longer something that we can close an eye on. It's affecting you and I and it's affecting US. It is real and it is happening now. Climate change, frequent earthquakes and tornadoes are signs that the nature is turning against the humankind. Irresponsibility takes its toll as we're residing on the mother earth, harvesting every growth from the soil and yet we take nature for granted, cutting the sheltering trees down and polluting the earth in every way.
Somehow, if you think the earth may speak, She may most likely sound like this, "I have given my fruits as your labour, trees and hills for your shelter and the river and sea as your source of life but what you've asked too much of me by balding every soil and digging into the very core of mine, asking more than I'm willing to give! How dare humans. I shall return the favour now by showing you what I am capable of doing. I've wiped the entire mighty reptiles off the earth and I've no doubt in doing so on much more tiny creatures!"
As imaginative as it may sound, it brings a fact that we've asked too much from the nature and furthermore, destructing and bringing harm to it. Let's not contemplating and procrastinating on when to protect the Mother Earth and something has to been done now and NOW is the time.
God bless.
Round two....
It was indeed a lovely Saturday of food and Scouts. :D
