From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/06/environmental-collapse-now-a-serious-threat-scientists/
By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
PARIS
— Climate change, population growth and environmental destruction could
cause a collapse of the ecosystem just a few generations from now,
scientists warned on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The paper by
22 top researchers said a “tipping point” by which the biosphere goes
into swift and irreversible change, with potentially cataclysmic impacts
for humans, could occur as early as this century.
The warning contrasts with a mainstream view among scientists that environmental collapse would be gradual and take centuries.
The
study appears ahead of the June 20-22 UN Conference on Sustainable
Development, the 20-year followup to the Earth Summit that set down
priorities for protecting the environment.
The Nature paper,
written by biologists, ecologists, geologists and palaeontologists from
three continents, compared the biological impact of past episodes of
global change with what is happening today.
The factors in today’s
equation include a world population that is set to rise from seven
billion to around 9.3 billion by mid-century and global warming that
will outstrip the UN target of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit).
The team determined that once 50-90 percent of
small-scale ecosystems become altered, the entire eco-web tips over into
a new state, characterised especially by species extinctions.
Once the shift happens, it cannot be reversed.
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