The World in 2030

108 The World in 2030
the next quarter of a century. What is clear is that mankind’s
activities are almost certainly causing the climate to warm
up in an unnatural and dangerous way. The United Nation’s
Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change 211 (the IPCC)
produced a report 212 as this document was being written
which stated that it is ‘90 per cent likely’ that human activity
is responsible for global warming. They said the evidence
was ‘unequivocal.’
Here are just three of the IPCC’s conclusions (with links
to the data sources):
1). World sea levels are rising 50 per cent faster 213
today than predicted in the last IPCC report in
2001.
2). The Gulf Stream has slowed by about 30 per
cent 214 between 1957 and 2004.
3). The IPCC itself says there’s a dangerous lag
with atmospheric warming. Eighty per cent of
the extra heat currently being trapped by greenhouse
gases is being drawn into the oceans. As
the oceans warm, more of that heat will remain
in the air. Even if emissions were sharply reduced,
the world would continue to warm by
0.1° C per decade for some time.
Over 2,000 scientists specialising in studying climate
change and related disciplines contributed to the IPCC
report and all had to agree unanimously with the report’s
findings. For all reasonable people the debate about whether
or not climate change is a real and worrying phenomenon is
over. Perhaps the Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery