IPCC:n (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) mukaan ilmastonmuutoksen vaikutukset tulevat näkymään ennakoitua nopeammin.

The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said today.

Professor Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought.

[..] He said the international response to the problem had failed to grasp that serious consequences such as reduced crop yields and coastal flooding were now inevitable. “Mitigation has got all the attention but we cannot mitigate out of this problem. We now have a choice between a future with a damaged world or a severely damaged world.”

Aika hyvin sanottu. Vaihtoehtomme ovat vahingoittunut maapallo, tai todella pahasti vahingoittunut maapallo. Samasta puhuu myös Tim Flannery, asiallisen Ilmaston muuttajat -kirjan kirjoittaja (via Yahoo News):

Flannery said predictions in a 2001 UN report, warning the atmosphere was likely to warm by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5-10.4 Fahrenheit) from 1990 to 2100 now appeared conservative.

“In the six years since then, we’ve collected enough data to (check) whether those projections are valid or not,” he said.

“It turns out they’re not valid, but in the most horrible way — because for the key performance indicators about climate, change is occurring far in advance of the worst-case scenario,” he said.

“Carbon dioxide’s increasing more rapidly, sea levels are rising more rapidly (and) the Arctic ice cap is melting away more quickly than were projected in 2001.”

Hyvin menee.