Friday 18 November 2011

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years

If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

2 comments:

howard thomas said...

Money is what it is all ultimately about. Big money ........oil companies,governments,billionaires! And if there is any truth in what is said here , then we are all doomed, because nothing is going to change much in 5 years.

GIDEON MACK said...

Oh Adrian lighten up sir.

“According to the most thorough analysis yet of world infrastructure” – meaning yet another finger in the air ‘what if’ opinion based upon a computer model of a guessed theory by someone with too much time on their hands.

You’ll be telling us that nothing travels faster than light next!