The world only has ten years to make the huge changes needed to combat global warming, according to an energy expert. Peter Smith was addressing the British Association festival of science in Norwich when he made the claims.

“The scientific opinion is that we have a ceiling of 440 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric carbon before there is a tipping point, a step change in the rate of global warming,” Professor Smith said. “The rate at which we are emitting now, around 2ppm a year and rising, we could expect that that tripping point will reach us in 20 years’ time. That gives us 10 years to develop technologies that could start to bite into the problem.”

Smith believes the recent energy review was incredibly short-sighted, not just in its insistence on flogging the dead horse of nuclear but also because it ignored almost completely the potential of wave and tidal energy around the British coatsline.

Technorati tag: Tipping Point, Global Warming