Global Warning a Real Menace

Councillor Phil Bateman Mayor of Wolverhampton said "In Canada Tony Blairs comments about the dangers of 'greenhouse gas' is taken seriously. Indeed the Toronto Star reported on Prime Minister Blairs recent article in British Papers.

I think that we would be silly to ignore the advice being offered by scientists. Big City Government does have an important role to play. It cannot just be left to Government. I hope that we will as a City look at the policy objectives we set ourselves in this area. I am confident that Councillor Roger Lawrence City Leader, will do just that. In the meantime here is what the Toronto Star wrote about Tony Blairs comments.

"It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable," he wrote.

Over the next century, global warming is expected to raise ocean levels, intensify storms, spread disease to new areas and shift climate zones, possibly making farmlands drier and deserts wetter.

The UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says temperatures rose by about 0.6 degrees Celsius in the 20th century. Computer modelling predicts increases of between 1.4 and 5.8 C by the year 2100, depending on how much is done to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists have warned of climatic "tipping points" such as the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down.

In the British report (links to excerpts), the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, warned that the huge west Antarctic ice sheet may be starting to disintegrate, an event that could raise sea levels by five metres.

Rapley said a previous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report playing down worries about the ice sheet's stability should be revised.

"The last IPCC report characterized Antarctica as a slumbering giant in terms of climate change," he wrote. "I would say it is now an awakened giant. There is real concern."

Blair's vow to put climate change at the centre of the international agenda during Britain's leadership of the G-8 and the European Union last year met with limited success.

He was unable to overcome the Bush administration's antipathy to the Kyoto climate-change accord — rejected by the U.S. government on the grounds it would damage the American economy.

British ministers also have acknowledged that Britain is unlikely to meet its own target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2010.

In Canada, Prime minister-designate Stephen Harper said during the recent federal election campaign that the emissions-cutting targets of the Kyoto treaty were not realistic, but he didn't say he would pull Ottawa out of the accord.