Climate Change Pace exceeds Estimates

February 15, 2009 · Filed Under climate change 

Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Departtment of Global Ecology at Stanford University and a member of the IPCC, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said, “We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriosly in climate model simulations.”

He went on to explain that emissions from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have lagely outpaced the estimates used in the U.N. panel’s 2007 reports, due largely to the increased burning of coal in developing countries.

Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of “feedback loops” that are speeding up natural processes.

Speaking about the melting of arctic permafrost, Field said, “It’s a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost.”

He also noted that evidence is also accumulating that terrestial and marine ecosystems cannot remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as earlier estimates suggested.

Climate change is just one of the factors that will cause Peak Food.

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