BRITAIN: Climate change is a more serious threat to the world than international terrorism, the British government's chief scientific adviser said yesterday.
Sir David King's message appeared to be mainly directed at the US President, Mr George Bush, who has launched a war on terrorism but is accused of ignoring environmental peril.
Writing in the leading American journal Science, Sir David spelled out the accumulating evidence of global warming effects, and the dire predictions made by experts.
He said if greenhouse gas emissions continued unabated, "millions more people around the world may in future be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding and debilitating diseases such as malaria".
In a blunt call for the US to stop dragging its feet, Sir David wrote: "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."
His comments followed the publication of the results of an international study published on Wednesday in the science journal Nature which aims to predict the likely effects of global warming. It predicted that a quarter of all species of plants and animals on earth could be wiped out by 2050 in one of the biggest mass extinctions since the dinosaurs.
The United Nations said the study, highlighting threats to creatures ranging from Australian butterflies to Spanish eagles, showed a need for the world to back the Kyoto Protocol, which was meant to put a brake on rising temperatures linked to human pollution.
"A quarter of all species of plants and land animals, or more than a million in all, could be driven to extinction," said Mr Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at England's University of Leeds.
Prof Thomas, lead author of the study, said that emissions from cars and factories could push temperatures up to levels not seen for one million to 30 million years by the end of the century, threatening many habitats. - (PA/Reuters)