WARNING:
Climate “Tipping Point” Is Near

James Hansen

Exactly 20 years after he first addressed the US Congress alerting the United States, and the world, to the catastrophic consequences of human-caused climate change, James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, has issued a new and urgent warning of the shocking consequences of failure to take immediate action to radically cut carbon emissions.

The window of opportunity for effective action is rapidly closing, he says. Without an effective government-led response, the world is in danger of “passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes.” These could include a two-meter rise in sea levels in this century, hundreds of millions of environmental refugees, and mass extinctions that wipe out half the earth's species. The common assumption that it is safe to aim at a temperature increase of not more than 2 degrees Celsius is, he says, “a recipe for disaster”.

Posted: 27 Jun 2008.

Image credit: "Peaked Oil" by Azrainman
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