13/07/2001 11:09 - (SA)
Climate change could be sudden
Matt Daily
http://www.news24.co.za/News24/Technology/Science_Nature/0,1113,2-13-46_1052053,00.html
Amsterdam - Future changes in the earth's climate may happen suddenly, triggered by man-made factors such as smokestacks and exhaust pipes, scientists said on Thursday.
Although there is a high degree of uncertainty in forecasting, the panel of climate scientists said there would more likely be dramatic shifts, rather than the steady, progressive change previously predicted by other scientists.
"We are heading into uncharted waters and it is difficult to predict what lies ahead," Tom Pedersen of University of British Columbia told reporters in Amsterdam, which is currently hosting a conference called "Challenges of a changing earth."
The United Nations will resume talks in Bonn next week on the implementation of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls on industrialised states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2010.
But the future of that treaty remains in doubt following the United States' rejection of the pact earlier this year.
Evidence of past changes in climate gathered in Greenland shows dramatic shifts occurred in periods of less than 10 years, according to Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change in Germany.
Those shifts typically occurred when a critical ecological "threshold" was breached. They could be triggered in future by heat-trapping gases accumulating in the earth's atmosphere, he told the conference.
Full Story: http://www.news24.co.za/News24/Technology/Science_Nature/0,1113,2-13-46_1052053,00.html
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/