CLIMATE-CHANGE DATA 'OVERWHELMING'

An article based on leaked copy of a draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report not meant to be published till next year (good grief!--why on earth wait?), says there is now overwhelming evidence that the earth's climate is undergoing dramatic transformation because of human activity.

It predicts an increase in the average global temperature of 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius this century as a result of the doubling of carbon-dioxide level caused by man-made emissions. But it says those temperatures could increase by a further 1.5 degrees as a result of the positive feedback from the melting of sea-ice, the thawing of permafrost and the acidification of the oceans. So we could easily get 6 degrees. That is catastrophic.

In short the situation is far worse than has been officially admitted till now, because the real figures are higher than had been previously admitted. But watch that space. The figures will get worse and the official reports will get worse, because the ghastly real truth, the real increase, has yet to emerge. That is partly because in this, the biggest unplanned uncontrolled experiment ever done on earth no one knows exactly how bad the result will be, and partly because no one in power wants to admit just how much they have let things get fouled things up--just how much everyone addicted to black stuff has fouled things up. But remember, some computer models have predicted an increase of 10 to 14 degrees.

Why no one wants to do anything drastic about this drastic situation is a mystery. Some indication of why is in the newspaper linked to in the first paragraph above. Did it lead with this catastrophic story? No, it led with a story about some piffling Cabinet paper that was leaked to Telecom NZ informing it, before Cabinet had signed it off, that telecommunications were going to be restructured and it would lose its monopoly over the local loop. Big deal! Telecom NZ, better called Telecom Rex, or T Rex for short, has had it coming for years. Its fate does not matter a jot. The planet's matters terribly.