Scientists at a conference in Canberra, Australia are saying that climate change is happening much faster, and likely to have much more dire consequences, than anyone imagined possible a year or two ago. What's more, we may have already passed the point of no return.
Climate change expert Barry Brook, a professor at Adelaide University, said that based on the volume of greenhouse gases being dumped into the atmosphere he expected an average 6 degree Celsius jump in worldwide temperatures. To put that into perspective, a 3 degree increase could wipe out the Amazon rain forest, and 5 degrees would mean an ice-free planet and a sea-level rises of 80 metres (260 feet).
Another researcher, Barrie Pittock, noted that CO2 emissions had already surpassed the worst-case scenario in Iast year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that the effects of climate change were occuring far more rapidly as a result.
Even more frightening, conference participants noted that feedback mechanisms would cause temperature increases to snowball, so to speak, even if carbon emissions were successfully reduced. The nature of these mechanisms means that once we reach certain "tipping points", there will be no way to prevent disaster. How close we are to these tipping points is uncertain, but Professor Brook observed that "We're seeing events predicted for the end of the 21st century happening already."
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