The Scotsman, 27 January 2006

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=132492006

Nightmare vision of a world 200 years on

IAN JOHNSTON
SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT

ONE of Britain's leading environmentalists will today sound a doomsday warning
to the world: humanity's very existence is under threat from climate change and,
even if we survive, the population will crash to about a third of its current
level.

Sir Crispin Tickell, the man who convinced former prime minister Margaret
Thatcher that global warming was a real problem, predicts that, in 200 years,
there could be as few as 2.3 billion people because rising sea levels and
temperatures will make some areas uninhabitable and, coupled with social
factors, depress birth rates.

But he also says our survival is "not guaranteed" and that the presence of
humans on the planet could be "no more than a somewhat messy episode in the
history of the Earth".