The other day I went to a seminar given by Professor James Curran. He was recently voted into the 100 most influential scientists.
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Professor James Curran, a physicist and meteorologist, is Head of Environmental Strategy at SEPA (the Scottish Environment Protection Agency). Recently elevated to Scotland on Sunday’s 100 most influential people list, he is a member of the UK Climate Impacts Programme steering board and the UK Sustainable Development Panel. His talk will draw on the latest research to illustrate the magnitude of the threats facing mankind from anthropogenic climate change.
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He said right from the start that his intention was to make us afraid just as he is of the impact on the planet from global warming and that was exactly what he did.
Topics that he discussed mainly revolved around Scotland and how climate change was affecting us but also how it was affecting the globe. He also discussed positive impact on global warming from situations such as CO2 being released from soils, as a result of the Amazon dying out and also from reduced CO2 retension in the worlds oceans.
What was clear was that everything is interconnected and it’s almost like a domino effect. You have global warming which will result in desertifaction, loss of the rain forests, ocean temperature and current changes, species becoming extinct and water shortages and flooding particularly along coastal areas.
There were a lot of facts and figures, charts and graphs on show to hammer the message home and none of them showed anything positive, it was all very gloom and the outlook does not look good at all unless people change the way they live their lives now. According to SEPA and going on trends, research and statistical analysis the globe will be putting out as much CO2 into the atmosphere, in 2050, as humans are and that is the point of no return and we have until then, probably sooner, to do something about it.
He suggested that positive influences such as locked CO2 in the peat-lands of Scotland escaping into the air through desertification could lead to increases in temperature not of 1 or 2 degrees but as much as 8 or 9 within the next few decades.
Another thing he said that within the next few decades, i forget the exact estimate he gave, 30% of the worlds species would be extinct.
I’ll post up notes and slides when / if I can get hold of them.