It's official: global warming is man-made - and Irish scientists are warning of dire consequences here if we fail to act, writes Liam Reid.
As his car crawled south along the N11 towards Wexford on Thursday afternoon, Dr Padraic Larkin was not particularly worried about the delay in getting home.
Instead he was thinking about the endless line of cars, most of it commuter traffic, and the damage it was causing the environment.
Dr Larkin is deputy head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and is unequivocal that global warming poses the main threat to the Irish and global environment.
"I've spent 30 years working in the environment area. I've been through all of the issues, like water [ pollution], and smoky coal, but this is the real big one." For Dr Larkin the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published yesterday, has one stark message for Ireland and the world: the future of mankind is in jeopardy unless we do something to stem the principle cause of global warming, carbon dioxide emissions. And we must do it fast.
The IPPC report, one of a series of four to be published by the body this year, is being heralded as one of the most important documents of its kind ever to have been produced.
Titled the Fourth Assessment Report, it is the culmination of five years of work, and represents the joint assessment of more than 100 countries.
Yesterday's publication focuses on the science of climate change. Later reports this year will focus on impact and what can be done to address the problem.
Yesterday's report concludes that the global warming that has taken place since the 1960s is 90 per cent certain to have been caused by man-made emissions from industry, transport and power generation.
In addition, it predicts that climate change will continue, with average annual temperatures across the globe rising by between 1.8 degrees and four degrees by the end of the century, with the likeliest outcome being an average annual temperature increase of about three degrees.
The conclusions of temperature rises of three degrees by the end of the century might appear modest, but to see it as such would be to fundamentally underestimate the impact of climate change.
Last month the EU warned that climate change of more than two degrees over the same period will have irreversible and catastrophic consequences.
Firstly, an average rise of three degrees would see some parts of the inhabited world become unbearably hot. It would mean that the very hot summer of 2003 across continental Europe - which is classed as a temperate climate - would become the norm. That summer tens of thousands of people across the continent died from sunstroke.
The impact in other parts of the globe will be even greater, and make some of the hottest regions uninhabitable.
The rise in temperatures will also cause sea level rises of up to 38cm, the report predicts, which will put the homes of tens of millions of people in jeopardy.
One of the most at-risk regions is the Bay of Bengal, and the country of Bangladesh, one of the poorest in the world with a population of about 147 million. Modest sea level rises have already seen some of the smaller islands in the bay disappear. A one-metre rise could inundate up to 15 per cent of Bangladesh.
The temperature rises will also come alongside stormier weather. It will mean more hurricanes of stronger intensity in areas such as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. The stormier weather will bring more intense rainfall and with it more flooding. In addition, the stormier weather will prompt greater coastal erosion.
THE REPORT HASalready been criticised as too conservative in some of its predictions, especially in terms of weather patterns and sea level rises, because of the interference of governments' representatives to water down some of the conclusions.
The committee does not carry out research itself, but collates existing work from around the globe and draws conclusions and predictions from that. It is separated into three working groups, each assisted by a full-time staff. The first examines the science of climate change, the second the impact of climate change, and the third the measures that can be taken to stem or address it. In all, 2,500 scientists have been involved to varying degrees.
The working groups hold various meetings during the year to discuss the emerging evidence in their own sector. The research and reports by the group are reviewed and amended by other academics and researchers, and through this process the various chapters of the reports are drafted and edited.
The summary of each report is then forwarded to the 100 or so governments for comment, and further amendments.
However for Dr Rowan Fealy of NUI Maynooth, one of the country's top climate researchers, this misses the importance of the report, which is that such a large and diverse body has been able to agree that the causes of global warming are man-made.
"This is quite a strong statement from a body that is fairly conservative," he says, pointing to the fact that representatives from more than 100 countries would have signed up to this statement, including administrations that have questionable records on climate change, such as the United States.
"I think the important point is that it is a consensus between science and policy. It would be futile for science to produce a report that could then be ignored by the policy-makers," says Dr Fealy, who feels the latest conclusions should be seen in the context of previous reports.
YESTERDAY'S REPORT WASthe fourth from the IPCC, the organisation founded in 1988 by the UN and World Meteorological Organisation.
A 1995 report from the body said there was some evidence that climate change may have been caused by man. In 2001 that had changed to "likely" and yesterday it became 90 per cent certain.
Environmental scientists are hoping that the report will dissipate complacency relating to climate change, especially in countries with mild climates such as Ireland.
FOR DR FEALY, complacency is a critical error. Even if the effects on the Irish climate are modest over the next century, the country will be facing other enormous pressures.
"We've had economic refugees, but in the next 50 years we will be looking at environmental migration in a future where people can no longer live in their homelands." The IPCC report itself speaks of food and water shortages, and the displacement of up to 600 million people, or a 10th of the global population, as a result. This will place enormous pressure on Ireland.
Dr Padraic Larkin of the EPA points to the British government report last year by the economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warns of the impact of climate change on the future world economy.
"It points to a possible 20 per cent depression in gross domestic product if nothing is done," he states. If that happens we will have a global world recession unprecedented in modern history.
Ireland will not avoid global warming, either. Research by Dr Fealy and his colleagues at the Irish climate change research project in Maynooth suggests warmer, dryer summers in the southeast and colder wetter winters in the northwest. Water shortages can be expected in parts of the country from 2020 if new infrastructure is not built, while increased flooding and coastal erosion will also be evident.
Over the course of the century, people will have to deal with the possibility that coastal erosion will mean abandoning some of the more coastal areas to the sea, according to Dr Fealy.
"We will have to begin to come to terms with new concepts like managed retreat," he says.
For many observers, yesterday's report highlights the failures at national level to deal with the cause of global warming, namely carbon dioxide emissions.
These emissions have been growing at an alarming rate, driven mainly by increases in private transport and demand for energy. In basic terms, the Irish boom has seen people buy larger cars to drive longer distances, in an economy that has an ever-growing appetite for electricity.
In terms of greenhouse gas pollution per head of population, we are now only surpassed by Luxembourg and the US.
For Dr Larkin, a fundamental change is needed in Ireland. Sensitive issues, such as reducing commuting through proper planning, will need to be dealt with, he warns.
"We have between 10 and 15 years, and that is what the IPPC report is saying. We have got to act now if we are to keep emissions at a level where things do not begin to spiral out of control."