Melting ice: the threat to London's future

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () newcastle ac uk>
Date: July 14, 2004 5:59:52 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Melting ice: the threat to London's future

Dave:

Here for IP if you wish is an account of the latest pronouncement on 
the dangers of global warming, not by some ill-informed amateur, or 
some environmental researcher hoping to scare up some more research 
funding, but by the UK Government's Chief Scientific Advisor, no less.

From today's Guardian (UK)

> Melting ice: the threat to London's future
>
> Paul Brown, environment correspondent
> Wednesday July 14, 2004
> The Guardian
>
> There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than for 55m years, 
> enough to melt all the ice on the planet and submerge cities like 
> London, New York and New Orleans, Sir David King, the government's 
> chief scientific adviser has warned.
>
> Speaking on his return from Moscow, where he has been acting as the 
> prime minister's "unofficial envoy" to persuade the Russians to ratify 
> the Kyoto protocol to fight climate change, Sir David said the most 
> recent science bore out the worst predictions.
>
> An ice core 3km deep from the Antarctic had a record of the climate 
> for 800,000 years and showed the direct relationship between the 
> amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warm and cold periods 
> for the planet.
>
> Critical in climate records is the quantity of ice at the poles and in 
> glaciers. Records show that at the peak of the ice age 12,000 years 
> ago, the sea was 150 metres below where it is now. "You might think it 
> is not wise, since we are currently melting ice so fast, to have built 
> our big cities on the edge of the sea where it is now obvious they 
> cannot remain.
>
> "On current trends, cities like London, New York and New Orleans will 
> be among the first to go.
>
> "Ice melting is a relatively slow process but is speeding up. When the 
> Greenland ice cap goes, the sea level will rise six to seven metres, 
> when Antarctica melts it will be another 110 metres," he said.
>  . . .
> He said that the realisation of the scale of the crisis was what 
> prompted him to say in January that climate change was a bigger threat 
> than global terrorism. "We are moving from a warm period into the 
> first hot period that man has ever experienced since he walked on the 
> planet."
>
> He said the heatwave of last summer in which 25,000 Europeans died had 
> killed more people than terrorism, yet had not been given anything 
> like the same level of attention.
>
> The prime minister had charged him with talking to governments ahead 
> of the G8 summit to convince them of the urgency of action on climate 
> change, of research and development of renewables.
>  . . .

Full story at:

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1260825,00.html

Cheers

Brian



--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon 
Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/

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