Urgency to Act :
"Today it is no secret that there are thousands of animal and vegetable species that have disappeared from the planet, some 50,000 hectares of humid tropical forests have been annihilated, and the desserts have grown worldwide by 20,000 new hectares. Today, the worldwide economy has consumed the equivalent of 22 million tons of oil and, consequently, we will have, during an average 24 hour period, collectively released into the atmosphere, over 100 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions..."
Franz J. Broswimmer Ecocide
The global temperature is unpredictable, the Arctic and the Antarctic are beginning to melt, plants bloom ahead of time... the Earth has breached into climatic change. Up until the heatwave of summer 2007, global warming just seemed like another scientific fantasy. This was the case for many, until the difficult wake-up call for Europeans, who experienced the worst heat wave in recent history. The heat wave left no less than 30,000 dead, millions of cultivated hectares burnt by the sun, a string of water restrictions and colossal uncontrolled wildfires. Just to hit the nail on the head, the weather experts in France just revealed that, according to their calculations, the frequency of torrid summers should quintuple in the future.
The thousands of scientists which are members of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (GIEC) are categorical: Yes, the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting. Yes, sea levels are rising. Yes, there is unsettling climate change. Yes, vegetation is undergoing erratic cycles of growth. Yes, certain species of animals have begun a northern migration. The earth has begun an irreversible change in climate!
At the origin of these upheavals are greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane). The GIEC has finally acknowledged that these emissions are the main accelerators of global warming, well ahead of astronomical phenomena. In one hundred years, the world temperature has risen by 0.6ºC, with a sharp acceleration during the last quarter century. This increase is much less negligible than it seems, because it hides the phenomenal disparity of +5ºC in northern Alaska and Siberia as well as a moderately higher cooling trend in Greenland. The warming trend affects more so the continents than the oceans, the northern hemisphere than the southern and the nights than the days. For example, the temperature in France has gone up by 1.5ºC during the coldest part of the night and a maximum of 0.9ºC during the warmest part of the day.
Downloaded the complete text HERE.
Frédéric Lewino – Le Point
Organisation Mondiale de la santé/Impact changements climatiques:
Here is the hyperlink to an article issued by the World Health Organization in connection to the impact of climate change worldwide.
l'Organisation Mondiale de la Santé vis l'impact des changements climatiques
Rapport Stern:
The Stern Review on the economy of climate change is an explanation of the effects of climate change and global warming to the planet, written by the economist Nicholas Stern for the government of the United Kingdom. Published the 30th of October 2006, this review of over 700 pages is the first review financed by a government on climate change by an economist and not by a meteorologist.
His principal conclusions are that a percentage of the GNP invested now would be sufficient to strongly reduce the effects of climate change “a punctual increase in the price index, in the same size as the costs to which we are used to facing, for example in that which concerns the fluctuations of the change of rate. This will in no way slow down our rate of growth” and otherwise it would risk a recession of up to twenty per cent of the GNP worldwide.
Wikipédia
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm
Rapport du GIEC:
Here are the published reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Synthesis Report :
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/syrfrench/spm.pdf
Synthesis Report :
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/giecgt1.pdf
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/giecgt2.pdf
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/giecgt3.pdf
