Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming, says a devastating new climate report.
Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world’s governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process — thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years — is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.
The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore.
Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world’s top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world’s species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch of the report in this ancient Spanish city, told The Independent on Sunday that he found the “quickening pace” of global warming “very frightening”.
And, with unusual outspokenness for a UN leader, he said he “looked forward” to both the United States and China — the world’s two biggest polluters — “playing a more constructive role” in vital new negotiations on tackling climate change that open in Indonesia next month.
source: commondreams.org
