Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a U.N. international climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached a dangerous level.
Flannery said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will show that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere in mid-2005 had reached about 455 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent -- a level not expected for another 10 years.
"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."
[...]
He said the measurement of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere included not just carbon dioxide, but also nitrous oxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). All these gases were measured and then equated into potentially one gas to reach a general level.
"They're all having an impact. Probably 75 percent is carbon dioxide but the rest is that mixed bag of other gases," he said.
[...]
Flannery said global economic expansion, particularly in China and India, was a major factor behind the unexpected acceleration in greenhouse gas levels.
I will have to talk to my locals to see what they have to say about Flannery and the above when I get a moment. However, let me point my readers back to an old post: Why Global Warming in Inevitable.
1 comment:
Calling Tim Flannery a "Climate Change Scientist" is a bit much. He's a scientist, and he's written about climate change, but his fields are paleontology and zoology.
I'm no denialist and I quite like Flannery's work - I just think "climate change scientist" should be reserved for scientists who are published climatologists.
Post a Comment