TL: TEN REASONS TO FEAR CLIMATE CHANGE 
SO: Jeremy Leggett, Greenpeace International (GP)
DT: May 23, 1994

1. THE RATE OF GLOBAL WARMING

...the rate estimated by the IPCC is faster than many animals and
plants will be able to adapt to.

2. THE DEGREE OF GLOBAL WARMING

...evidence from ice-core studies suggests that when the
world was last as warm as is predicted for the first half of the
next century, the climate was prone to catastrophic
destabilization, driven by ocean circulation turning on and off.

3. THE THREAT TO ECONOMIES

...given only a slight increase in the scope for windstorms,
drought-related wildfires, and floods, the $1.4 trillion
insurance industry would be in danger of facing a total
collapse.

4. THE THREAT TO ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY

...given only a slight warming of tropical waters, coral
reefs - the second most diverse ecosystem on the planet and the
very foundations of many nations - face the threat of
ecological holocaust.

5. THE THREAT TO FOOD

...proliferating drought, flood, and pests - acting alone or in
concert - pose a clear danger to food security in many
areas.

6. THE THREAT TO WATER SUPPLIES

...already under stress, freshwater supplies will drop as
runoff falls, with disastrous impacts, especially in major
river basins in drought-prone areas.

7. THE THREAT TO HEALTH

...many disease vectors will proliferate, and extend their
range, according to the World Health Organisation.

8. THE THREAT OF CONFLICT

...stresses along international river systems such as the
Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates will be pushed to potential
explosion point, and environmental refugees generally will
number in the hundreds of millions.

9. THE THREAT OF "SURPRISES"

...all this pertains to the "best-guess" estimates of the
IPCC. As they themselves point out, there is plenty of scope for
natural amplifications of warming (positive feedbacks), which
would mean that they had underestimated global warming the same
way scientists underestimated the threat posed by
CFCs to the ozone layer, and the pace and extent of ozone
depletion even after the ozone hole was discovered.

10. THE WORST-CASE ANALYSIS

...an unstoppable runaway greenhouse effect, where a point of no
return is reached beyond which no matter how much humans cut
their greenhouse-gas emissions, emissions from drying
soils, dying forests, warming oceans, melting permafrost,
destabilizing methane hydrates, and other such sources, are
accelerating.