[Edited
by Li Ming-chu / compiled from wire service reports, February 19]
The
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented its
latest report on the Geneva conference today, stating that the ice caps
in the North and South Poles will continue to melt and other climatic
changes will occur over the next several centuries. The Earth's tropical
islands and snow-covered Alpine skiing retreats may not be around for
future generations to enjoy.
According
to the report, global warming will lead to increased agricultural yield
in the northern region of the temperate zone, but will be detrimental
to farms in the tropical zone. This will further widen the gap between
the rich in the prosperous industrial countries and poor in developing
nations.
The
report said that poor countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will
bear the brunt of the devastating effect of global warming, but the
wealthier countries will not be immune either. In the United States,
Florida and other areas along the Atlantic coast are most likely to
be lashed by storms and endangered by the rising sea level. In the 21st
century, climate changes may lead to large-scale and possibly irreversible
changes to the Earth that will subsequently cause disasters worldwide.
This
report, an incisive review on climate changes published for the first
time in five years, is a nineteen-page summary of a thousand-page research
report entitled "Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability",
conducted by some seven hundred scientists. Given the political sensitivities
of the climate debate, the summary was subject to a weeklong discussion
by experts and government representatives from many countries prior
to release, and was finalized only yesterday.
The
experts on the panel have reached this alarming conclusion: Human-accountable
climate change will lead to more "freak" weather conditions
such as cyclones, floods, and droughts; massive displacement of populations
in the most severely affected areas; potentially enormous loss of human
life; greater risk of diseases such as malaria as the habitat for mosquitoes
expands; and extinction of species such as the Bengal tiger, as their
habitat is destroyed.
The
report predicted that crop yields in Africa will be reduced, water sources
will diminish, and desertification will become more severe due to decreased
annual rainfall, especially in South, North, and West Africa. Hot weather,
floods and droughts in the barren and tropical regions of Asia may hurt
food production. In the coastal lowlands of the temperate and tropical
zones, massive population displacements will occur due to rising sea
levels and land shrinkage.
Southern
Europe is likely to become vulnerable to drought, while other regions
on the continent may have more frequent floods . It is predicted that
half of the Alpine glaciers could disappear by the end of this century;
droughts and floods will occur more frequently in Latin America; vital
crop yields will be reduced in many places; malaria and dengue fever
will spread in North America; and climate changes in the polar regions
will be the most extreme of the whole planet.
