21/06/2004

The American Association for the Advancement of Science last week demonstrated, yet again, just how little scientific credibility George Bush can claim for his position on climate change. The AAAS, the world’s largest general science society, organised a free public conference, where an all star panel of climate experts, warned that governments and consumers in the united states should take immediate steps to reduce the threat of global warming.

The climate specialists at the conference pointed out that while some commentators dispute the risk, there is in fact no cause for doubt. The world has warmed, and is warming, due to human activities. Without action now, they warned, the impact could be devastating.

Daniel Schrag professor of geochemistry at Harvard likened the political situation to that on the Titanic after it had struck the ice berg “if your standing at the back of Titanic you’re thinking ‘oh, I’m going up, we can’t be sinking”. Global warming, he said, ‘should not be a partisan issue”. “We cannot wait for a catastrophe to appear before we act because by then it would be too late.”

Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton university, added that: “By mid century, millions more poor children around the world are likely to face displacement, malnourishment, disease and even starvation unless all countries take action now to slow global warming.”

The scientists also took issue with the line, often spun by Bush and his chums at Esso, that action should wait because the science was still uncertain. They acknowledged that climate forecasting models could never be 100% certain, and pointed out that there will always be uncertainty about what exactly will happen and precisely how various factors will exert influence. Nevertheless, the panelists agreed that reasonably accurate predictions could be made over the long term – and that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were certainly a major agent of climate change. Indeed, they argued that models are more likely to err on the conservative side, rather than exaggerate the risks as some sceptics have claimed. What’s more, technological advances were delivering huge increases in the capabilities of these models.

Worryingly, Oppenheimer pointed out that current models project that if Greenland temperatures rise by another 3 degrees C, complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet would eventually result. “If the West Antarctic ice sheet becomes unstable, global sea level would rise about 5 meters and as much as seven meters if the Greenland ice sheet melts," Oppenheimer said. Although the sea level rise would mainly occur in later centuries, these outcomes could be set in place within the current century. "Antarctica is very dramatically losing ice at this point," Oppenheimer told reporters at the conference. "If Greenland or West Antarctica disintegrated, the state of Florida would disappear."

David Battisti, professor of atmospheric sciences at Washington university, was asked whether melting polar ice would de-stabilize ocean circulation, pushing the relatively warm Gulf Stream southward and causing the North Atlantic to freeze as depicted in Hollywood's latest disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow"? Probably not, replied Battisti. "One hundred years from now, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to be at least two times greater than today," he said. "Any localized cooling that might occur in the North Atlantic will be overwhelmed by a very large warming caused by a large increase in the greenhouse effect."

Read more about this story in the AAAS new archive

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