I know of no incidence anywhere of dioxins at naturally occurring levels actually causing any harm, to anything.
I
offer these examples of my reaction to environmental scare stories over the years because I suppose I am about to put forward one of my own.
of rising temperatures, the vast ice sheet covering the western side of the continent may be starting to break up. Were it to collapse into the sea, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise global sea levels by more than 16 feet.
would bring a new ice age to Europe. A group of American scientists calculated that in the absence of major action to control emissions, the chance of this happening was now greater than 50 per cent.
Goodbye London; goodbye Bangladesh. Only four years ago the IPCC said it was safe for probably a thousand years, certainly until the end of this century; last week Professor Chris Rapley, the BAS director, said that judgment would now have to be revised.
And there was an assessment that the Greenland ice sheet may start to melt – which would cause global sea levels to rise by 20 feet – caused by a temperature rise of only 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We are already 0.7oC above pre-industrial levels. We are well on the way.
In February the British Government held an international conference, in Exeter in SW England, on climate change. It was called personally by Tony Blair, who is making the problem of global warming one of the central policies of his simultaneous the forests of Queensland, leadership in 2005 of both the rivers of the Rockies, the alpine Perhaps the most vivid of the G8 group of rich nations a plethora of pessimistic and of the European Union. flowers of New Zealand – one after papers was a review of The purpose of the conference another they will all go studies on which ecosystems was to update policy-makers and species would be hit by everywhere on climate change • The second alert concerned an issue which temperature rises. It was a long, science, which is rapidly moving. many of the scientists present were only dire litany of disappearances likely The latest report by the UN’s Inter dimly aware of: the acidification of the as the mercury moves up the world’s governmental Panel on Climate oceans. The billions of tonnes of carbon thermometer: Change (IPCC) is that the earth’s dioxide human society is producing are • Queensland’s highland tropical for average surface temperature is likely not only causing the climate to change. ests very soon; to warm by between 1.4 and 5.8 When they dissolve in sea water they degrees Celsius between now and the are combining with it, in a simple • at a one degree rise, South Africa’s year 2100, depending on how human chemical reaction, to produce carbonic unique fynbos flora and the rest of the societies controlled their emissions of acid. But the world’s seas are alkaline, Arctic sea ice; carbon dioxide (CO2), the waste gas and have been for many millions of • between one and two degrees the from industry and transport which is years, and it is in this environment that trout in the rivers of the Rockies; retaining more and more of the sun’s thousands of species of small marine • between two and three degrees the heat in the atmosphere. organisms at the bottom of the food alpine flowers of Europe, Australia and These are enormous rises (even at web, from plankton to shellfish, have New Zealand, the broad-leaved forests evolved. They will not be able to live the lower end) and they are expected of China, and the rain forests of the in an acid sea. to have similarly enormous impacts, Amazon. One after another they will ranging from the widespread failure The point about these two disclosures is go, the special places of the earth, the of agriculture and many more extreme that they were not based on predictions glories of creation. weather events from droughts to of future events by supercomputer flooding, to sea-level rise around the models of the global climate, which he overwhelming impression world. This Exeter conference was in is the origin of most scare stories – to given by the conference, the nature of a mid-term report about use the term neutrally – about global a meeting of entirely sober where the science had got to before the warming. They were based on actual scientists was that these things will next IPCC report in 2007. observation, in the real world, of things happen. Firstly, there was a strong sense that climate change was proceeding much that are happening now. The opening day brought disclosure of more quickly than had been anticipated. two major new threats to the world. But there were plenty of predictions as Compared with four years ago, “there • The first concerned the Antarctica well at the conference, and they were is greater clarity and reduced uncertainty ice sheet, with a warning from the grimmer than ever. For example, there about the impacts of climate change across British Antarctic Survey (BAS) – the was the most pessimistic assessment a wide range of systems, sectors and societies. body whose scientists discovered the yet of global warming, causing collapse In many cases the risks are more serious than ss ozone hole – that, perhaps because of the Gulf Stream, which perversely previously thought.”
T
Tui Motu InterIslands 11