Blair issues blunt warning on climate change

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warns that the impact of climate change may be more serious than previously thought, in a new government report on global warming published on Jan. 30. The report raises fears that both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are likely to melt, leading to a devastating rise in sea levels. It warns of large-scale and irreversible disruption if temperatures rise by more than 5.4º Fahrenheit–well within the range of climate change projections for the century. Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change is published as a book and collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office in February 2005. The conference predicted that greenhouse gases would raise global temperatures by up to 8º Fahrenheit over this century. "It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought," Blair wrote in the forward to the book. "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." The book includes concerns expressed by the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Professor Chris Rapley, that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet may be starting to disintegrate. Scientists believe such an event would raise sea levels around the world by almost 16 ft. Rapley writes that a previous report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dismissing worries about the ice sheet's stability had to be revised: "The last IPCC report characterized Antarctica as a slumbering giant in terms of climate change. I would say it is now an awakened giant. There is real concern." The report also warns that the European Union may have to adopt tougher climate change targets. It is committed to preventing global temperatures from rising by more than 6º Fahrenheit, but the report warns that such a rise would trigger the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, prompting the extinction of the polar bear and the walrus. British environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, said the report highlighted the "tipping point" beyond which climate change could be expected to become irreversible. This made it even more urgent to halt the change quickly, and meant that current targets–such as reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent by the middle of the century–may not be ambitious enough. "What is disturbing about the Exeter report is that it suggests that what has been a long-term policy framework is going to cause more major difficulties than people imagined," she told BBC Radio 4's "Today" program. Beckett said she hoped to publish the government's climate change strategy–initially penciled in for last year–in the near future, and certainly by the end of 2006. She denied that the government had already decided to invest in new nuclear power stations as a way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but said the option had to be considered because of the role it could play in meeting the UK's long-term climate change targets. "The reason we need to look at it very seriously is that the one thing you can say about nuclear power is that, once you have put in all the energy required to construct the nuclear power stations, it is actually a low-carbon form of energy," she said. Friends of the Earth (FOE) called for urgent action to cut greenhouse gases. "Despite Tony Blair's concerns about climate change, UK emissions have risen under Labor," said FOE's climate change campaigner, Roger Higman. "He should now support mounting calls for a new law requiring the government to make annual cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, and make Britain a world leader in the development of a low-carbon, nuclear-free economy."