Scientist warns of the “tropics on fire”

Dr Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has warned that tropical rain forests may dry out and become vulnerable to wildfires as global warming accelerates.  Field told American scientists that the IPCC’s 2007 survey on global warming had significantly underestimated the accelerating rate of global warming and that ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions from developing economies such as India and China is pushing the planer beyond its ‘tipping point’ when rain forests can absorb CO2 as part of the natural cycle. If forested areas then themselves are converted from carbon ‘sinks’ into sources of CO2 the whole warming process accelerates.  Field’s warming was echoed by French scientists who warned that rises in global sea levels by 40cm by 2100 was now a ‘best case’ scenario and Al Gore who said that “we have now reached a stage where continuing on our present course will threaten the entirety of human civilisation”