[url=http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Warming-will-39wipe-out-billions39.5867379.jp]Warming will ‘wipe out billions'[/url]
MOST of the world’s population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree a method of stopping current rates of global warming one of the UK’s most senior climate scientists has warned. Experts fear billions could die as a result of climate change.
Professor Kevin Anderson director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change believes only around 10 per cent of the planet’s population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.
“For humanity it’s a matter of life or death” he said. “We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive.
“But I think it’s extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C 5C or 6C you might have half a billion people surviving.”