Swiss Re calls for action following release of IPCC report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s fourth assessment report on climate change have debunked myths and confirmed Swiss Re’s view that human activity is a major contributor to climate change.Ivo Menzinger, Swiss Re’s head of sustainability, held a conference call to discuss the key findings of the report and its implications.Menzinger said that the report is essentially the consensus view of more than 6,500 scientists from around the world and confirms the findings of the third report, released in 2001.”So, there were no major surprises, but what the report does is reduce, quite significantly, the uncertainties that were still associated with some of the findings and messages of the third report,” Menzinger said.Some critics in the past pointed to the “so-called urban heat island effect” (the belief that higher temperatures in urban areas are the result of tar and buildings absorbing and reflecting heat) and the theory of solar activity (the belief that the sun has different cycles of solar activity) to account for the rising rate of temperature increases. While the latter is a natural phenomenon, it can not explain the environmental trends we see today, he commented.Both have been demystified and debunked, he said, noting that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations going back 650,000 years has never been as high as today.The report’s findings “convey a sense of emergency because we now have a better understanding of human influence,” he said.”Climate change is a real phenomenon that stays with us, it will not go away, and it requires action today.”