Global warming a 'severe threat'

Friday, 9 January 2004 5:20 AM

Global warming is a more "severe" threat to the world's long-term future than international terrorism, according to the Government's chief scientific adviser.

Writing in Science magazine, Sir David King warned spelt out the grave ramifications for the world if political leaders continued to look askance at the issue.

Without action, the world may in future be "exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding and debilitating diseases such as malaria," he warned.

And in a message to American politicians, whom have declined to sign the Kyoto Protocol, he said: "As the world's only remaining superpower, the United States is accustomed to leading internationally co-ordinated action. But at present the US government is failing to take up the challenge of global warming.

"We [the UK] cannot solve the problem in isolation."

Sir David said the UK was responsible for only about two per cent of poisonous emissions whereas the US accounted for more than a fifth, despite having only four per cent of the world's population.

He criticised the US for "refusing to countenance any remedial action now or in the future".

In the scientific journal Nature, Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at Leeds University argued the next fifty years would see the extinction of a quarter of all land animal and plant species, due to global warming.

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