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NORWICH, England (Reuters) — Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.

Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24 million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York.

Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from 10-50 percent of them could disappear.

“We may very well already be on the breaking edge of a wave of mass extinctions,” Thomas told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Human-induced climate change must be treated as an immediate threat to national security and prosperity, says John Ashton, the UK’s climate change envoy. He argues that we must secure a stable climate whatever the cost, as failure to do so will cost far more.

The first priority of any government is to provide the conditions necessary for security and prosperity in return for the taxes that citizens pay.

Climate change is potentially the most serious threat there has ever been to this most fundamental of social contracts.

On 28 August 2005, New Orleans was a prosperous, stable and relatively harmonious city. By the next evening, most of its population had been driven from their homes and lacked access to electricity, food, fresh water and medical services.

Within a week, gunmen roamed the streets as law and order broke down; simmering racial and political tensions exploded as the buck for dealing with the catastrophe – as well as preventing it – was hurled about. For months, neighbouring cities and states were inundated with refugees as the political and racial stresses spilled across the country. New Orleans is unlikely ever fully to recover.

Hurricane Katrina hit a city in the world’s richest nation. If anywhere should have been resilient enough to deal with the force of nature, it was the United States.

The economic and security impacts of extreme climatic events in more vulnerable regions, such as Africa and South Asia, or more strategically important regions, like the Middle East, will be more dramatic.

We can see this already in Africa. A major contributing factor to the conflict in Darfur has been a shift in rainfall that has put nomadic herders and settled pastoralists into conflict with each other.

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Rising temperatures will increase the risk of forest fires, droughts and flooding over the next two centuries, UK climate scientists have warned.

Even if harmful emissions were cut now, many parts of the world would face a greater risk of natural disasters, a team from Bristol University said.

The projections are based on data from more than 50 climate models looking at the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers gathered results from 52 computer simulations to calculate the risks from climate-induced changes to the world’s key ecosystems.

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