Davos warns of consequences of Arctic melt
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The melting of the Arctic, as a consequence of global warming, will cover large areas of the planet with water, among these populous cities, experts warned here today.
The region is losing ice at an alarming rate, warned Gail Whiteman, a professor at Lancaster University, during a panel on the subject held at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Half of the ice cover in the Arctic has disappeared in the past 50 years, she said.
When the WEF was founded five decades ago, the ice was white, but now it is thinner and therefore bluer, causing greater heat absorption, known as the albedo effect, she said.
Whiteman presented computer-generated images that show large cities like New York, Tokyo and London flooded with water from rising two degrees Celsius in global temperature.
What happens in the Arctic doesn't stop there. The only way to reverse that situation is to take political and economic actions at the international level, he said.
Although there is consensus on the danger posed by the climate crisis, the discordant note was the speech of U.S. President Donald Trump, who once again defended his antithesis.
In his only allusion to the issue, the president expressed that the environment was very important to him, but then he reiterated his rejection to the scientific evidence and proofs on global warming by criticizing 'the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse' on the planet. / PL
