The effect of 3 degrees C.

The Guardian has just published another article on global warming in which they report on a new analysis of the effects of likely rises in temperature. The article is called Forecast puts Earth's future under a cloud. Here's part of what it says:

More than half of the world's major forests will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3C or more by the end of the century, it was claimed yesterday. The prediction comes from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the potential effects of human-made global warming.

Extreme floods, forest fires and droughts will also become more common over the next 200 years as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, according to Marko Scholze of Bristol University...
Dr Scholze said the effects of a 2C category were inevitable. This is the temperature rise that will happen, on average, even if the world immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases. This scenario predicts that Europe, Asia, Canada, central America and Amazonia could lose up to 30% of its forests.
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A 3C warming could also present a yet more dangerous scenario where the temperatures induce plants to become net producers of carbon dioxide. "As temperatures go up, plants like it better and they start to grow more vigorously and start to take up more carbon dioxide from the air," Dr O'Neill said. "But there comes a point where the take-up is saturated for a given vegetation cover, then the ecosystem starts to respire more than it's taking up."

Dr Scholze's work shows that this so-called "tipping point" could arrive by the middle of this century. His scenarios echo research from the UK's Hadley Centre, a world leader in climate change modelling. In a report published last year called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, scientists at the centre predicted that a 3C rise in average temperatures would cause a worldwide drop in cereal crops of between 20m and 400m tonnes, put 400 million more people at risk of hunger, and put up to 3 billion people at risk of flooding and without access to fresh water supplies.

I am in pain for the children being born today. What a terrible legacy we are leaving them. They will rise up and curse our name and we will deserve it too.