The report, Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, collates
evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK
Meteorological Office in February 2005.
The conference set two principal objectives: to ask what
level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is too much, and what the
options are for avoiding such a level.
In the report’s foreword, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
writes that “it is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases…
is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.”
Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said the report’s conclusions would be a shock to many people.
“The thing that is perhaps not so familiar to members of
the public… is this notion that we could come to a tipping point
where change could be irreversible,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today
programme.
“We’re not talking about it happening over five minutes,
of course, maybe over a thousand years, but it’s the irreversibility
that I think brings it home to people.”
Vulnerable ecosystems
The report sets out the effects of various levels of temperature increase.
To continue reading this report –