Sarah Mukherjee, BBC 12 Feb 09;
A new report says treaties aimed at reducing CO2 emissions are useless.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers report says we have to accept the world could change dramatically.
It also says we should start planning our major infrastructure now to accommodate more extreme weather events and sea level rises.
While not against attempts to reduce emissions, the report's authors say we should be realistic about what can be achieved with this approach.
Realism
International diplomats and environment campaigners have, for years, been pursuing an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
In its present incarnation it is called the Kyoto Protocol.
This treaty runs out in 2012, and negotiations are carrying on at the moment to replace it - negotiations which will culminate in a meeting in Copenhagen later this year.
The authors of the report are not optimistic about the outcome:
"The new agreement's most basic premise will be to try and limit the negative man-made effects on our climate system for future generations.
"In other words, the agreement will aim to reduce global CO2 emissions by mitigation.
"However, the existing Kyoto Protocol has, to date, been a near total failure, with emissions levels continuing to rise substantially."
While the report's authors point out that the Institution, like many scientific bodies, has a strong belief that we need "to reduce CO2 to secure long-term human survival", they also say that we should be realistic about what we can achieve.
And "even with vigorous mitigation effort, we will continue to use fossil fuel reserves until they are exhausted."
Climate proofing
If climate change scientists' predictions are correct, the world will look very different if we are unable or unwilling to stop using fossil fuels to the extent we are doing today.
Sea level rises could be seven metres in the UK by 2250, which, unchecked, could inundate much of London, East Anglia and other coastal areas.
We may have to accept, they say, that we will need to abandon some parts of the country, and spend significant amounts of money defending others.
2250 may seem like an unimaginably long time away, but the report's authors point out that parts of the London Underground system that are still in use were built in the 1860s, and today's engineers are facing projects the lifetime of which will extend into 2100.
The majority of existing infrastructure, they say, will continue to be operational for at least another 100-200 years.
The "climate proofing" the institution recommends extends into almost every construction.
For example, towns and cities, they say, should be planned to adjust street layouts to correspond with the prevailing winds, maximising ventilation and cooling.
The location of many power stations may have to be reconsidered, as they are often in coastal areas.
And railways were often placed in river valleys to make the most of low gradients.
The report's authors say that while they support efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they are "realistic enough to recognise that global CO2 emissions are not reducing and our climate is changing so unless we adapt, we are likely to face a difficult future."
Model sees severe climate change impact by 2050
Michael Kahn, Reuters 12 Feb 09;
LONDON (Reuters) - Current efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions will do little to ease damaging climate change, according to a report issued Friday that predicts Greenland's ice sheets will start melting by 2050.
A computer model calculated that if carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow at the current rate over the next 40 years, global temperatures will still rise 2 degrees Centigrade compared with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
This would push the planet to the brink, sparking unprecedented flooding and heatwaves and making it even more difficult to reverse the trend, according to the report from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in Britain.
"Indeed organizations such as the European Union believe that an increase of 2 degrees Centrigrade relative to the pre-industrial climate is the maximum acceptable temperature rise to prevent uncontrollable and catastrophic climate change," the report said.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of hundreds of scientists, says its best estimate is that global temperature will increase this century by 1.8 to 4 degrees Celsius.
Temperatures have already risen by about 0.7 degrees Celsius since before the Industrial Revolution.
The researchers from the engineering group used the 1.9 percent average annual increase of carbon dioxide emissions over the past 25 years for their model and assumed that rate would continue until 2050.
"What we are saying is that even with mitigation there will be significant changes in the climate," said the Institute's Tim Fox, who helped write the report.
The computer model also calculated effects over the next 1,000 years, predicting that by the end of the first decade of the 22nd century, atmospheric carbon dioxide would be four times the pre-industrial level even with a decreasing rate of emissions.
Temperatures would continue to rise. By the year 3000 there would be little left of Greenland's ice sheets and the circulation of the Atlantic ocean would be fundamentally altered.
"This temperature increase will have global consequences, with nearly all regions experiencing their own particular climate-related challenges," the report reads.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn; editing by Maggie Fox and Andrew Roche)
