Eminent Scientists Warn of Disastrous, Permanent Global Warming
SAN FRANCISCO, California, February 19, 2007 (ENS) - The leaders of the world's largest general scientific society issued an imperative climate change warning Sunday. "The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years. The average temperature of the Earth is heading for levels not experienced for millions of years."
Global warming is not a theory, it is a fact based on a "growing torrent of information," said the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, in its first consensus statement on climate change. The statement was issued at the association's annual meeting in San Francisco, which concludes today.
"Scientific predictions of the impacts of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation match observed changes. As expected, intensification of droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies," the board said.
This photo-realistic image of the Earth was made using MODIS surface reflectance data collected and composited over the late spring and early summer of 2001. (Image by Reto Stockli courtesy NASA Earth Observatory)
Approved by the board on December 9, 2006, nearly two months before a similar statement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the AAAS statement warns, "Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be."
"Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species' ranges, and more," the board stated.
"The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now."
"These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible," warned the board.
The 14 member board includes scientists from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the University of Michigan, University of Utah, Ohio State, Lehigh, the California Institute of Technology, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
Dr. John Holdren, who becomes board president today, told delegates in his presidential address, "Global climate change is real, humans are responsible for a substantial part of it, and it's taking us in dangerous directions."
President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Dr. John Holdren delivers his presidential address to delegates at the 2007 AAAS annual meeting. (Photo courtesy AAAS)
Without swift and urgent action, he said, the problems could spiral toward disastrous, permanent changes for all of life on Earth.
"Climate change is not a problem for our children and our grandchildren - it is a problem for us. It's already causing harm," said Holdren, who serves as director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University.
Holdren's address was a review of evidence which, taken together, shows a planet under profound stress. One of the central problems, and the most complex, he said, is ending the reliance on fossil fuels that is damaging and destabilizing the Earth's ecosystem.
Eminent Scientists Warn of Disastrous, Permanent Global Warming
