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LONDON: A group of US scientists have warned that a
UN panel on climate change underestimated the scale of sea-level
increases this century resulting from global warming, The
Independent reported on Tuesday.
The six scientists said the Earth
is in “imminent peril” in a 29-page article published in the
July 15 issue of the “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society.”
“Recent greenhouse gas
emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate
change that could run out of control, with great dangers for humans
and other creatures,” wrote the group led by James Hansen, the
director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
They predict in their paper,
“Climate Change and Trace Gases,” that sea levels may rise by
several meters by 2100, The Independent said.
That compares to a forecast from
the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in a
February report that predicts sea levels increasing between 18 and
59 centimeters.
Such rise in sea levels means
low-lying areas would be inundated.
The other scientists involved in
the paper were Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha and Gary Russell, also
of the Goddard Institute, David Lea of the University of California
at Santa Barbara and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory at Columbia University in New York.
--AFP
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