Greenland's glaciers are melting faster than predicted

The European Commission is today set to release a report on global warming this week, entitled: "Adapting to Climate Change in Europe - Options for EU Action." Its message is clear and disturbing: the time to act is now.

Choose your poison: flooding, droughts, forest fires and landslides are all being caused with increasing frequency as a result of global warming and a united Europe is putting itself on notice.

Such is the scale of the potential problem that the report raises the possibility of "relocating ports, industry and entire cities and villages from low-lying coastal areas and flood plains." - International Herald Tribune

The report stresses planning as a key element, lest Europe be left in a reactive posture "to increasingly frequent crises and disasters which will prove much more costly and also threaten Europe's social and economic systems and its security."

The document is aimed at galvanizing the European Union's 27 governments into action, charging them, rather than the European Commission, with the responsibility for establishing and refining the conservation of the continent.

Those European governments agreed earlier this year to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent of 1990 levels by the year 2020. European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, noted the urgency need for heightened measures to check global warming after visiting Greenland's melting glacier, a forlorn symbol of climate change.

"We must do something. The situation is very dramatic," Barroso told Danish news agency Ritzau after a boat trip late Sunday along the west coast of the giant Arctic island. - International Herald Tribune

Besides slashing carbon dioxide emissions, environmentalists and policymakers alike agree that governments must prepare for the imminent and drastic changes bound to result from quickly rising temperatures.

"What we are seeing now are the early signs of climate change as a result of the emissions produced in the 1960s and 1970s," said Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London.

"There is a 40 year lag between carbon entering the atmosphere and its effects starting to show." - International Herald Tribune

Burke calls the report "a wake-up call," and warns that billions will likely need to be spent "preparing and adapting," to already existing climate changes, money that is also needed to stop climate change from worsening.

The grimly detailed study also illustrates how changes on the European continent will be felt on others, acknowledging that the worst effects of global warming will be felt in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The report warns that the situation "could lead to vast displacement of populations including in regions close to Europe."

The document concluded that "each European citizen will be affected one way or another and the widest possible involvement of all members of society is needed." - International Herald Tribune

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