A billion people will lose their homes due to climate change, says report

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/28/cancun-climate-summit-weather

A billion people will lose their homes due to climate change, says report

British scientists will warn Cancún summit that entire nations could be flooded

Robin McKie The Observer, Sunday 28 November 2010

Devastating changes to sea levels, rainfall, water supplies, weather systems and

crop yields are increasingly likely before the end of the century, scientists

will warn tomorrow.

A special report, to be released at the start of climate negotiations in Cancún,

Mexico, will reveal that up to a billion people face losing their homes in the

next 90 years because of failures to agree curbs on carbon emissions.

Up to three billion people could lose access to clean water supplies because

global temperatures cannot now be stopped from rising by 4C.

" The main message is that the closer we get to a four-degree rise, the harder it

will be to deal with the consequences, " said Dr Mark New, a climate expert at

Oxford University, who organised a recent conference entitled " Four Degrees and

Beyond " on behalf of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Tomorrow

the papers from the meeting will be published to coincide with the start of the

Cancún climate talks.

A key feature of these papers is that they assume that even if global carbon

emission curbs were to be agreed in the future, these would be insufficient to

limit global temperature rises to 2C this century – the maximum temperature rise

agreed by politicians as acceptable. " To have a realistic chance of doing that,

the world would have to get carbon emissions to peak within 15 years and then

follow this up with a massive decarbonisation of society, " said Dr Chris

Huntingford, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxfordshire.

Few experts believe this is a remotely practical proposition, particularly in

the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks last December – a point

stressed by Bob , former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change and now chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural

Affairs. As he put it: " Two degrees is now a wishful dream. "

Researchers such as Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office,

calculate that a 4C rise could occur in less than 50 years, with melting of ice

sheets and rising sea levels.

According to François Gemenne, of the Institute for Sustainable Development and

International Relations in Paris, this could lead to the creation of " ghost

states " whose governments-in-exile would rule over scattered citizens and land

lost to rising seas.

Small island states such as Tuvalu and the Maldives are already threatened by

inundation. " What would happen if a state was to physically disappear but people

want to keep their nationalities? " he asked. " It could continue as a virtual

state even though it is a rock under the ocean. "

Stott of the Met Office said the most severe effect of all these changes

is likely to involve changes to the planet's ability to soak up carbon dioxide.

At present, around 50% of man-made carbon emissions are absorbed by the sea and

by plants on land.

" However, the amount of carbon dioxide that can be absorbed decreases as

temperatures rise. We will reach a tipping point from which temperatures will go

up even faster. The world will then start to look very different. "