Originally published February 26 2006
Climate change report makes a believer out of British Prime Minister Tony Blair
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
In the foreword to the report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Tony Blair made clear that the threat of greenhouse emissions and their impact upon the global climate is greater than expected.
The threat posed by climate change may be greater than previously thought, and global warming is advancing at an unsustainable rate, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a report published Monday.
"It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable," he wrote.
Over the next century, global warming is expected to raise ocean levels, intensify storms, spread disease to new areas and shift climate zones, possibly making farmlands drier and deserts wetter.
Computer modeling predicts increases of between 2.5 degrees and 10.4 degrees by the year 2100, depending on how much is dome to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists have warned of climatic "tipping points" such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down.
In the British report, the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, warned that the huge west Antarctic ice sheet may be starting to disintegrate, an event that could raise sea levels by 16 feet.
Rapley said a previous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report playing down worries about the ice sheet's stability should be revised.
"The last IPCC report characterized Antarctica as a slumbering giant in terms of climate change," he wrote.
Blair's vow to put climate change at the center of the international agenda during Britain's leadership of the G-8 and the European Union last year met with limited success.
He was unable to overcome the Bush administration's antipathy to the Kyoto climate-change accord --- rejected by the U.S. government on the grounds it would damage the economy.
British ministers also have acknowledged that Britain is unlikely to meet its own target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2010.
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