U.N. WARNING OVER GLOBAL ICE LOSS

[Anonymous]

UN warning over global ice loss
Hundreds
of millions of livelihoods will be affected by declining snow and ice
cover as a result of global warming, a UN report has warned.
The risks facing people included losing access to drinking water, and rising sea levels, the study concluded.

The findings were published by the UN’s Environment Programme (Unep).
Unep
chief Achim Steiner said the report showed that time was running out
for political leaders to reach a global agreement on curbing emissions.
Mr
Steiner made his call for action at the launch of the UN Global Outlook
for Ice and Snow report, which was being held in Tromso, Norway.

Melting of snow and ice will in itself have severe consequences on nature and society ,Helen Bjoernoey

Norwegian Environment Minister
“The
report underlines that the fate of the world’s snowy and icy places in
a climatically challenged world should be cause for concern in every
ministry, boardroom and living room across the world,” he said.
“The
missing link is universal political action. Today’s report should
empower the public to take their leaders to task [and] should empower
them to ask how much hotter it has to get before we act.”

‘Feedback’ fears
The
study warns of a range of threats that could destabilise ecosystems
around the world, with potentially devastating consequences for
hundreds of millions of people.Melting glaciers in Asia’s mountains
could affect an estimated 40% of the world’s population, who rely on
ice melt for crop irrigation and drinking water.It added that rising
temperatures were already resulting in the thawing of permafrost in
places such as Siberia. This was leading to the release into the
atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.The fate of the
Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which hold almost all of the
planet’s freshwater ice, needed to be better understood, the UN
publication urged.It said that if emissions of greenhouse gases
continued unabated, the massive ice sheets were likely to become
unstable as the world continued to warm.Without taking measures to
mitigate sea level rise, an estimated 145 million people, primarily in
Asia, would be exposed to the risk of flooding.

The UN said that the International Polar Year, a 24-month global scientific study of the polar regions,
would help shed light on how climate change is altering the ice
dynamics in these regions.The authors also warned that less ice and
snow cover was leading to more of the Sun’s energy being absorbed by
the land and the sea, rather than being reflected back into space.They
said this “positive feedback” could accelerate global warming and
result in more abrupt shifts in the climate.Norway’s Environment
Minister, Helen Bjoernoey, said the comprehensive study into the state
of the world’s snow and ice presented a bleak prognosis.”To me, it is
particularly alarming to realise climate change can be a reinforcing
process – global warming results in further global warming,” the
minister observed.”As documented in the report, melting of snow and ice
will in itself have severe consequences on nature and society.” 

[Author]

June 5, 2007 at 1:29 PM