Poznan: Get ready for the worst in climate change.

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Get ready for worse climate change impacts: expert

Posted: 12/14/2008 9:10:00 AM ISThttp://news.smashits.com/328202/Get-ready-for-worse-climate-change-impacts-expert.htm

Poznan

(Poland), Dec 14 (IANS) An extra billion people will face water

shortage, cereal production in developing countries will drop and

coastal regions will face more damage from floods and storms because of

delay in combating climate change, says a leading expert.The

world should be prepared to face far worse effects of global warming

than it is facing now, Martin Parry, a professor at the Imperial

College in London, said in the backdrop of little substantial progress

at the Dec 1-12 climate summit here.Parry

is also former co-chair of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) working group and lead author of its seminal 2007 report.In

the report, the IPCC had said worldwide greenhouse gas emissions had to

peak by 2015 and then decrease if global warming was to be kept within

two degrees Celsius. Starting with the European Union, governments

around the world have talked of this as a desirable target.Parry

has put together from his own research and from studies around the

world the effect of delay on this goal in areas such as water supply,

food, health, coastal areas and other ecosystems.Even

if the world manages to reach an emission peak at 2015 and then cuts 80

percent of its emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 - a very ambitious

target, since it will mean an annual six percent emission reduction -

0.4 to 1.7 billion people will face water shortage due to the climate

change already taking place, something that Parry calls 'inevitable

damage'.But if the

world cuts its emissions after 2015 by three percent per year instead

of six percent - reaching 50 percent reduction by 2050 instead of 80

percent - one to two billion people will face water shortage, Parry has

calculated.If the

year of greenhouse gas emissions peak is pushed back to 2035, and then

cut at three percent per year, the number of people facing water

shortages will go up to 1.1-3.2 billion.Crop

productivity is already being affected by climate change, largely

through more frequent and more severe droughts and also through more

floods and storms.Parry

said that with a 2035 emissions peak year and three percent per year

cut after that, 'all cereal production will decrease' and the worst

would be faced in Africa.Climate

change is already leading to increased healthcare costs in developing

countries like India, as more people fall ill from water-borne diseases

and mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue germs spread their range in

a warmer world.Parry

expected this situation to worsen if the emissions peak year was pushed

back by 10 years, from 2015 to 2025. He also expected 'increased

morbidity and mortality from heat waves, floods and droughts'.Even

if world emissions peaked at 2015, but then decreased at only three

percent per year instead of six percent, Parry expected up to three

million more people living in coastal areas would face 'increased

damage from floods and storms'.The

effect of climate change is particularly severe on other species, with

many amphibians, particularly frogs, already facing extinction in a

warmer and drier world. The result has already been seen in India in

the last two years, where many insect populations have exploded in the

absence of their natural predators, the frogs.Parry

said if governments pushed back the emissions peak year to 2025 and

then cut back at three percent per year instead of six percent, 20-30

percent of all species on earth would be at 'increasingly high risk of

extinction'.Climate

change was already leading to the bleaching of corals in the world's

oceans. Parry said most corals would face this fate if the reduction in

emissions after 2015 was at three percent per year rather than six

percent.One of the

most frightening consequences of climate change that has started

already is the melting of the ice sheet in the arctic and western

Antarctica. If countries push back the emissions peak year to 2035 and

then cut at only three percent per year, the world would have to be

'prepared for a long-term commitment to several metres of sea level

rise due to ice sheet loss', Parry warned.Despite

the rhetoric at the close of the summit here, global financial crisis

has ensured that this time industrialised countries pull back on their

commitments to either cut their own emissions of greenhouse gases that

are warming the atmosphere, or help developing countries do so or cope

with climate change effects.

For the latest in news visit http://news.SmasHits.com If they want money let them ask us directly. We are ready to give it to them.Why do they need to poke our children with these vaccines? Why did not they become robbers or politicians? They can earn money that way too. Why do they have to malign such a noble profession? - A non pediatrician doctor, mother of an autistic child, at Hyderabad, India.

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