Global Warming Will Not be Halted by Current Human Civilization, Warn Scientists

NaturalNews) Nearly 90 percent of climate experts say that current efforts to reign in global warming will fail to prevent an average temperature rise of two degrees Celsius, according to a poll conducted by the British newspaper The Guardian.

The paper sent the survey to all 1,756 participants in a March climate conference in Copenhagen, and received 261 responses from 26 different countries. Two hundred of the respondents were climate researchers, while 61 worked in fields such as industry, economics or social sciences. They included authors of the groundbreaking 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as laboratory directors and university department heads.

Many of the papers presented at the conference presented evidence that the world's climate is likely to warm faster than previously anticipated.

In the survey, The Guardian asked researchers whether it was still possible to prevent global temperatures from rising to two degrees above pre-industrial levels. This is the threshold that has been set as a target by most climate activists and policy makers, and forms the basis of most planned or suggested emissions cuts.

Average global temperatures have already increased by 0.8 degrees since the Industrial Revolution, and would continue to increase another 0.5 degrees even if all burning of fossil fuels ceased tomorrow.

Sixty percent of survey respondents said it was still technically and economically possible to cut fossil fuel emissions enough to prevent a two degree increase. Only 14 percent, however, thought that such cuts would actually occur.

Even among those who believed that a two degree temperature increase would be averted, many admitted that they based this belief on hope rather than on evidence.

Forty-six percent of respondents said that a temperature increase of three to four degrees was most likely by 2100. Twenty-six percent said that temperatures were more likely to rise only two to three degrees, 13 percent predicted increases of four to five degrees, 10 percent predicted increases of two degrees or less, and 5 percent predicted increases of six degrees or more.