Human-fueled global warming has reached a "tipping point," according to a new survey of scientific research that found warming would continue even if greenhouse gas emissions halted immediately.

"It would keep on warming even though we have stopped the cause, which is greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels," David Jhirad of the Washington-based World Resources Institute said on Wednesday.

The rate of warming would be slower, Jhirad said in a telephone interview, but a kind of thermal inertia would ensure that global temperatures continue their upward trend.

He referred to a report released by the nonprofit institute this week that analyzed research reports on climate change for 2005.

"Taken collectively, they suggest that the world may well have moved past a key physical tipping point," the institute wrote.

Jhirad said there were actually two tipping points. The first is that there is no doubt human activities cause global warming; a more physical tipping point is that the effects of global warming are evident now.

The report, based on research published in journals including Science and Nature, also found the effects of climate change were so severe they should spur urgent action to prevent more damage and to combat damage that has already occurred.

"We can't assume this change is so far in the future that we can afford to delay," Jhirad said.

The World Resources Institute, founded in 1982, is a nonpartisan environmental think tank that works with industry and other ecological groups around the world.

CARBON TRADING

New policies should encourage companies to make technological and commercial innovations that will cut air pollution, Jhirad said, adding U.S. companies were also clamoring for political leadership.

Jhirad said he was "underwhelmed" by U.S. political leadership on this issue. In 2001, President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations' main plan to curb global warming. He denounced Kyoto as an economic straitjacket that would cost U.S. jobs and said it wrongly excluded developing nations.

The Kyoto agreement obliges some 40 industrial nations to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.

Jhirad said the United States should adopt a system of carbon trading, like one in place in much of Europe, where companies that emit few greenhouse gases get credits that can be traded with companies that emit a lot.

"The market has expanded tremendously in terms of the volume of trading and the value of the carbon credits," he said. "That's what we would like to see (in the United States): a market-friendly approach that would set incentives for technological innovation, which is going to be needed."

Also on Wednesday, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Civil Society Institute released a survey that found 83 percent of Americans wanted more leadership from the federal government to reduce the pollution linked to global warming.

The U.S. government is strongly opposing efforts by the United Nations to protect some of the most vulnerable World Heritage Sites from the impacts of global warming. The move comes as a meeting of experts convened by UNESCO begins today in Paris in response to petitions to protect World Heritage Sites threatened by climate change, including Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (in the U.S. and Canada), on Mount Everest and the Peruvian Andes where glaciers are rapidly melting, and the Belize Reef and Great Barrier Reefs (in Australia) which are being damaged due to climate change.

In a position paper posted on the conference website, the Bush administration argues against any action under the World Heritage Convention and attempts to cast doubt on the science of global warming.

“The administration is wrong on the science, and it’s wrong on the law,” said Chris Wold, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the International Environmental Law Project at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, and co-author of the petition to protect Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. “This position paper repudiates the well-established science of global warming, and contradicts other official U.S. government documents on climate change.”

The apparent author of the position paper is Paul Hoffman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, a Bush political appointee who gained national notoriety last year for his proposed re-write of National Park Service rules, which, according to a New York Times editorial, did “everything possible to strip away a scientific basis for park management.” The position paper makes a number of misstatements relating to climate change science, including the following:

Misstatement Number 1: “There is not unanimity regarding the impacts, causes, and how to or if man can affect the changes we are observing.”

This statement contradicts the scientific consensus that has existed for years on the causes of climate change. A 2002 National Academy of Sciences Report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, affirmed the now well-known principle that “[g]reenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and sub-surface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising.” At that time, greenhouse gas concentrations had increased from about 280 parts per million (ppm) at the start of the Industrial Revolution to about 370 ppm, and the Report found that “[h]uman activities are responsible for the increase.” Greenhouse gas concentrations now stand at 380 ppm. The National Academy of Sciences Report summary was incorporated into the U.S. Department of State’s U.S. Climate Action Report, submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat in 2002 as the official position of the U.S. government. The causes and impacts of global warming are not in doubt.

Misstatement Number Two: “[T]here currently is not enough data available to distinguish whether climatic changes at the named World Heritage Sites are the result of human-induced climate change or natural variability.”

As early as 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report, confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences, stated that “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” In the past five years the evidence has continued to mount and is now unassailable. Groundbreaking research by NASA in 2005 confirmed, via precise measurements of ocean temperature, the Earth’s energy imbalance due to greenhouse gas concentrations. Another leading paper demonstrated that the observed warming of the world’s oceans is far beyond what can be explained by any source of natural variability.

“The administration’s attempt to contradict global warming science is analogous to stating ‘the Earth is flat,’” said Kassie Siegel, Climate Program Director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Climate change threatens natural treasures like Glacier National Park, biodiversity, public health, and our nation’s future prosperity. The administration’s dangerous and irresponsible attempts to block progress must stop.”

After running roughshod over well-established scientific facts, the United States, which was only elected to the 21-member World Heritage Committee in October 2005, attempts to bully other nations into acceding to its do-nothing approach, stating, “There is no compelling argument for the Committee to address the issue of global climate change – especially at the risk of losing the unified spirit and camaraderie that has become synonymous with World Heritage.”

Peter Roderick, co-Director of the Climate Justice Programme which supports the petitions, and an attendee of today’s meeting, said “Opposing the international consensus on climate change is standard practice from the current U.S. government. But I am surprised that they are trying to undermine the previous Committee’s decision quite so soon after becoming a member. The Committee has already recognized the dangers that climate change poses to the best parts of the planet, and it is entirely appropriate for it to investigate the threat and draw up an urgent plan of action.”