Nobel Laureates’ Climate Tragedy Alert

COP21: Some of the world’s leading scientists are backing a declaration delivered to the French president, warning of the disastrous consequences of not limiting global emissions.

More than 70 Nobel laureates have given an urgent warning of the tragedy they believe that unfettered climate change would spell for humanity.

It is not the first warning of its kind, even from a group as distinguished as this.  But it is remarkable for its robust defense of the work and the methods of climate scientists.

The “Mainau Declaration” was handed to France’s president, François Hollande, at the Élysée Palace in Paris by two French Nobel laureate physicists, Serge Haroche and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, accompanied by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

“The nations of the world must take the opportunity at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris to take decisive action to limit future global emissions,” the declaration states.

Ever-increasing demand

“If left unchecked, our ever-increasing demand for food, water, and energy will eventually overwhelm the Earth’s ability to satisfy humanity’s needs, and will lead to wholesale human tragedy.”

The signatories stress that they are not themselves expert climate researchers, but a diverse group of scientists with “a deep respect for and understanding of the integrity of the scientific process”.  All have been awarded Nobel prizes in physiology, medicine, physics or chemistry, with one exception − the Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2014.

“Some of the brightest minds of our planet, the Nobel laureates, are highlighting what they deem to be one of the greatest challenges of our times: climate change,” Professor Schellnhuber said.

The scientists write:  “Nearly 60 years ago, here on Mainau [an island on Lake Konstanz, Germany], a similar gathering of Nobel laureates in science issued a declaration of the dangers inherent in the newly-found technology of nuclear weapons – a technology derived from advances in basic science.

“So far, we have avoided nuclear war, though the threat remains.  We believe that our world today faces another threat of comparable magnitude.”

Read more at Nobel Laureates’ Climate Tragedy Alert