UN Draft report: Global warming 1000+ year sea level rise!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 26 January 2007 17:13

Science - Climate

A draft UN report on the climate warns that the sea could keep rising for over 1000 years, whether the world is able to cut greenhouse gas emissions or not. Scary stuff – especially if you live in any coastal region, especially if you live close to the beach.

Reuters have reported on a draft UN report by the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’ on the climate with serious repercussions for every major continent, revolving around a study that involved 2500 scientists, with the full report due on February 2.

Apparently the world has been very lucky to have experienced a few volcanic eruptions and other air pollution over the past few decades, as this has helped to reflect “sunlight back into space”, meaning less heat reaching the planet.

The report details the likelihood of adverse environmental conditions, weather patterns and rising sea levels, with the Reuters report detailing estimates of exactly how bad things could get, but as you can imagine, it’s not good.

Given that many countries who have signed up to the Kyoto program will miss the targets and emit more pollution than intended, the world needs to rapidly speed up the development of alternate energy sources as quickly as possible to eliminate the need for combustion engine technology in cars and planes.

Converting as quickly as possible to electric engine technologies powered by ultra fast charging and high capacity batteries, or preferably some even as-yet undiscovered superior technology will have a dramatic impact on the amount of pollution spewed out into the atmosphere every day.

Developing and distributing this technology for sale throughout the world will obviously cost tens of billions of dollars, and likely more still.

But the cost of not doing this quickly enough is far worse. Given the hugely obscene amounts of money spent on wars, many of which are for resources that ultimately cause much of the global warming we’re all so worried about, it’s a shame we’re not spending the money we have on alternate clean green energy instead of spending it on bombs.

Hopefully, even if humanity is unable to stop greenhouse gases and pollution in time, we’ll be able to develop ‘clean up’ technologies that will help redress the balance. After all, in adversity, humans unite to defeat a problem. I hope we can do it again – and soon!