A new report warning of sudden, catastrophic effects from global warming should provide an impetus for change, a leading researcher says.
The report, from the US National Academies' National Research Council, warns that people can expect “climate surprises” in the form of “large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events”: more droughts, floods, extreme temperatures, hurricanes and rising sea levels.
Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, written by the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, brings together various branches of science to examine climate change in the past and debate future prospects (www.nap.edu/catalog/10136.html). The report urges “proactive policies” to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and improve water, land and air quality.
Dr. Paul Epstein, an expert in global warming at Harvard Medical School, says the new report indicates that “we've underestimated the rate of this change, we've underestimated the sensitivity of biological systems, we've underestimated the cost of global warming.”
The cost of failing to act could rise quickly, Epstein says, but “the good news is that clean and efficient energies can become engines of growth and stimulate the global economy.” Epstein is the author of several papers on the effects of climate on health (see CMAJ 2000; 163 [6]: 729-30), and associate director of Harvard's Center for Health and the Global Environment.
He has also co-authored a paper linking drought to the spread of the West Nile virus (Global Change and Human Health 2001;2[2]:1-4).
Evidence from Greenland ice cores shows that major changes occurred rapidly in the past, almost as if a switch had been flipped. Does global warming mean we have already pulled the switch? There is no simple answer, says Epstein. Major transformations may be caused by triggers that force a climate system across a threshold and result in huge change. — Debra Martens, Ottawa
Figure. Thar she blows Photo by: Canapress