Thread: sink or swim?

Global warming could make large areas of world uninhabitable
November 18, 2004

A leading New Zealand scientist warned yesterday that global warming would make large areas of the world uninhabitable by the end of the century unless the international community co-operated to solve the problem.

Professor John Barrett said that, after studying the Antarctic and its climate for 40 years, he was part of a huge community of scientists who are alarmed about climate change and its potential effects on the planet.

"We know from our knowledge of the ancient past that if we continue our present growth path we are facing the end of civilisation as we know it - not in millions of years, or even millennia, but by the end of this century," he said in Christchurch.

He was speaking after being awarded one of New Zealand's highest scientific awards for his Antarctic research.

An advance report of his speech which wrongly had him warning that the entire human race faced extinction by the end of the century attracted widespread attention and he tried to correct it in radio and television interviews.

But he retained his doomsday scenario, telling a Radio New Zealand interviewer who asked if he was predicting that large numbers of people around the world would be wiped out: "I think there is a better than even chance that will be the case if we do nothing about it."

Professor Barrett identified Europe, the American state of Florida and low-lying countries such as Bangladesh as areas most likely to become uninhabitable. New Zealand was in a "rather fortunate" location, he said, and would be less affected than Western Europe.

Asked if this meant New Zealanders could end up being one of the few populations left on the planet by the turn of the century, he replied: "Yes, I'd say that's even likely if we don't do anything."

He said the globe was heading by the end of the century for a climate three or four degrees warmer than now, conditions that last existed 30 to 40 million years ago before there were ice sheets in the Antarctic.

Asked what would actually happen, he said: "I'll tell you what happened in the past. The last change of that magnitude was quite recent - 20,000 years ago ice caps covered large parts of Europe, sea level was 120 metres lower and then temperatures rose five degrees and the ice caps melted, oceans rose. The climate stabilised about 10,000 years ago and it's been pretty stable ever since.

"Now they're talking about temperatures rising three or four degrees and of course there isn't as much ice to melt but the climate will be profoundly different. Civilisation will be very different."

He said one of the reasons for speaking out was in the hope that people would understand more about the issue and press their political leaders for an international commitment to an effective solution.

DPA