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Gleneagles, Scotland (pte030/06.07.2005/14:43) - Climate scientists are afraid that world leaders won't hear the urgency of their global warming call at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland http://www.g8.gov.uk/ .
British Prime minister Tony Blair has said that talks about definitive action against global warming would be priority at the summit that he is hosting.
In order to brief politicians about risks and prevention, Blair called a meeting in Exeter, South England, in February this year.
UK environment secretary Margaret Beckett said she thought that the "conference will be seen as a turning point in the perception of climate change. It underlines the need for urgent action". It was concluded that the global warming was "more serious than previously thought".
However scientists - among them Will Steffen, chief scientist at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme http://www.igbp.kva.se/cgi-bin/php/frameset.php , a conference organiser - don't think politicians have really got the message. "It is clear that the risk of dangerous climate change is higher than we thought even a year ago," he said. "World leaders should be made aware of these developments in the scientific community."
Another conference organiser and scientist, John Schellnhuber, research director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK, said: "Our great dilemma is that climate change policy lags behind climate change dynamics in a most dangerous way." He added: "Gleneagles should acknowledge the urgency by coming up with a G8 initiative - for instance 25 per cent emissions reductions for G8 countries by 2025." The G8 nations account for about 45 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Three of the potentially sudden and disastrous changes to planetary processes that could arise with a warming of between 1°C and 3°C are: runaway melting of ice caps causing eventual sea level rises of many metres; the shutdown of ocean currents like the Gulf Stream and the conversion of the planet's ecosystems from absorbers of greenhouse gas emissions into giant emitters.
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