Time for drastic action against warming?

Miguel Llanos Reporter • Profile • E-mail

Why bother reducing my carbon footprint? That's probably what many people asked after reading about a new study that predicts that even if carbon emissions were drastically reduced, droughts and other severe climate changes tied to the emissions would persist for 1,000 years.

So why drive less? Why buy a hybrid? Why promote renewable energy?

Because doing nothing, or doing less, would mean even more dire consequences, the study's authors and other scientists argue.

"If we don't slow down or stop emissions, the climate changes will get much larger and quite intolerable," Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an interview with msnbc.com.

The more dire scenarios for global warming envision water wars, food shortages or famine due to drought and the loss of huge swaths of farmland, torrential rains and severe flooding in some regions and rising oceans.

What the study, published Tuesday, and some earlier ones have done is raise the bar for policy changes. Many scientists now say that while it's crucial for individuals to reduce their carbon footprints, bigger strategies that can only come from government are necessary.

"This is a global problem and while individuals can do some, it needs concerted national leadership and international agreements," said Trenberth, who was not involved in the study.

Former Vice President Al Gore reinforced that notion Wednesday, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about how the United States might rejoin international climate talks after the former Bush administration rejected mandatory carbon curbs in favor of voluntary action and technological fixes.

Susan Solomon, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said that while climate change is slow, it's unstoppable.

Scientist writes to Obama
James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is one of the nation's more militant scientists when it comes to cutting carbon emissions.

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Hansen, long known for pushing policy recommendations when most scientists have been reluctant to do so, has become a lightning rod for warming skeptics. Last month he took his activism to a new level, writing a letter to then President-elect Barack Obama in which he said that even stronger plans to fight warming, including Obama's, were much too weak.

"Policies being discussed in national and international circles now, which focus on 'goals' for emission reduction and 'cap and trade,' have the same basic approach as the Kyoto Protocol," Hansen wrote, referring to the 1997 international climate treaty, which has h ad mixed results. " This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity."

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