Climate change threat 'as great as nuclear arms' » Environment » 24dash.com
Climate change poses as great a threat to the world as the nuclear arms race, scientists warned today as they called on leaders to take urgent action to tackle the problem.I had missed this earlier - Times Online
The scientists and Nobel laureates attending a three-day conference hosting by St James's Palace drew up a memorandum calling for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015.
The memorandum from the experts, who included US energy secretary Steven Chu, said a new global deal on emissions expected at the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December was urgently needed.
It must include commitments to cut worldwide greenhouse gases by half by 2050, the document urged.
And while developed countries should take the lead, with cuts of 25% to 40% by 2020, every nation must act, on the "firm assumption that all others will also act".
Prof Hans Schellnhuber, director of the the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said he believed that with "probably the biggest concentration of brains on the planet" drawing up the memorandum, it could be more vital than many mass demonstrations on climate change.
The extent of the climate threat is also highlighted today by a report that suggests global warming is already killing an estimated 300,000 people per year — equivalent to the loss of life that resulted from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
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I have no idea where they get that 300,000 number but if they counted the people that starved to death while we diverted their food aid to biofuels, I'd even guess that 300,000 number might be low.
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