More than 30 Nobel Laureates in a joint a declaration on Friday called for making rapid progress to reduce the current and future greenhouse gas emissions to minimise the risks of climate change.
“Based on the IPCC assessment, the world must make rapid progress towards lowering current and future greenhouse gas emissions to minimise the substantial risks of climate change,” said the declaration made at the Mainau Nobel Meetings in Germany. The spokesperson for the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change and Nobel laureate, Brian Schmidt of Australia signed the Mainau declaration at a press conference, according to a release.
“With this declaration, we outline the scale of the threat of climate change, and we provide the best possible advice,” he said.
He continues that he feels a “moral bound duty as a scientist on an issue that has such lasting consequences.”
Four Nobel Laureates met with Brian Schmidt on Thursday, one day before the signing of the declaration on Mainau island of Lake Constance on the last day of the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. These five scientists discussed this threat to mankind and possible steps and solutions: Steven Chu, former US Secretary of Energy, George Smoot, David Gross, Peter Doherty, and Schmidt, a Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist.
“We believe that the nations of the world must take the opportunity at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015 to take decisive action to limit future global emissions,” said the declaration.
This endeavor will require the cooperation of all nations, whether developed or developing, and must be sustained into the future in accord with updated scientific assessments. Failure to act will subject future generations of humanity to unconscionable and unacceptable risk, it added.
Earth’s ability to satisfy humanity’s needs, and will lead to wholesale human tragedy. Already, scientists who study Earth’s climate are observing the impact of human activity.
In response to the possibility of human-induced climate change, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide the world’s leaders a summary of the current state of relevant scientific knowledge. While by no means perfect, we believe that the efforts that have led to the current IPCC Fifth Assessment Report represent the best source of information regarding the present state of knowledge on climate change.
“We say this not as experts in the field of climate change, but rather as a diverse group of scientists who have a deep respect for and understanding of the integrity of the scientific process,” said the declaration.
The declaration observed that although there remains uncertainty as to the precise extent of climate change, the conclusions of the scientific community contained in the latest IPCC report are alarming, especially in the context of the identified risks of maintaining human prosperity in the face of greater than a 2°C rise in average global temperature.
The report concludes that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the likely cause of the current global warming of the Earth. Predictions from the range of climate models indicate that this warming will very likely increase the Earth’s temperature over the coming century by more than 2°C above its pre-industrial level unless dramatic reductions are made in anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases over the coming decades, it said. – Staff Reporter
