March 13th, 2009
More warnings, more call for action
Copenhagen is the bull’s eye for global warming politics this year. In a warm-up conference there this week, prior to the biggie in December, there were numerous warnings about the dire climate trends. Several low-lying areas of the globe like Florida were singled out for jeremiads and suggestions of doom. But the party continues in South Beach.
Today the Danish Prime Minister and conference host suggested “the worst-case scenario is being realized.” He went on to say that 2050 emissions must be down to the levels we passed back in 1990. OPEC will do their part, they’re planning
to cut oil production I hear.
Scientific summaries all pointed to faster and often more severe changes from sea ice melting to sea level rising. Said one scientist, “What we are seeing now is that some aspects are worse than expected.”
At the conference one shippoing firm has volunteers to begin shipping CO2 to the North Atlantic for burial beneath the ocean’s floor.
The head of the United Nations had an optimistic summing up: he sees a new global waming deal this year, citing American political leadership. That is not a sentence anybody would have written seriously a year ago. The next big climate conference is in Copenhagen in December to draft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which was never accepted by the U.S. or China, the world leading producers of greenhouse gases.
A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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