EXETER, England, February 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A top scientist forum in Britain raised the stakes for the dangers of global warming, with concerned scientists even outlining a timeline for the massive horrors awaiting the globe unless swift actions are taken

The three-day conference, that was wrapped up in the south western British city of Exter Thursday, February 3, focussed on scientists’ latest assessment of the global warming problem, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The conference was bluntly told global warming would boost outbreaks of infectious disease, worsen shortages of water and food in vulnerable countries and create an army of climate refugees fleeing uninhabitable regions.

Scientists even gave a detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is likely to cause to the world, according to British daily The Independent.

The scale of these impacts -- the theme of the second day of the major scientific forum on global warming -- varies according to how quickly fossil fuel pollution is tackled, how fast the world’s population grows and how well countries can adapt to climate shift.

Whole species of animals from frogs to leopards, living in vulnerable areas and with nowhere else to go, face extinction due to global warming, they said, according to the daily.

“The study pulls together for the first time the projected impacts on ecosystems and wildlife, food production, water resources and economies across the earth, for given rises in global temperature expected during the next hundred years.

“The resultant picture gives the most wide-ranging impression yet of the bewildering array of destructive effects that climate change is expected to exert on different regions, from the mountains of Europe and the rainforests of the Amazon to the coral reefs of the tropics.”

Produced through a synthesis of a wide range of recent academic studies, it was presented as a paper to the international conference on climate change held at the UK Met Office headquarters in Exeter by the author Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany's leading global warming research institute.

According to a study quoted by Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's top scientific authority on climate change, by 2050 as many as 150 million “environmental refugees” may have fled coastlines vulnerable to rising sea levels, storms or floods, or agricultural land that became too arid to cultivate, AFP said.

In India alone, there could be 30 million people displaced by persistent flooding, while a sixth of Bangladesh could be permanently lost to sea level rise and land subsidence, according to the study.

According to the Independent, the conference has been called personally by British Prime Minister Tony Blair as part of Britain's attempts to move the climate change issue up the agenda during the current UK presidency of the G8 group of rich nations, and the European Union.

It has already heard disturbing warnings from the latest climate research, including the revelation Tuesday from the British Antarctic Survey that the massive West Antarctic ice sheet might be disintegrating - an event which, if it happened completely, would raise sea levels around the world by 16ft (4.9 metres), as per the daily.

“Hare’s timetable shows the impacts of climate change multiplying rapidly as average global temperature goes up, towards 1C above levels before the industrial revolution, then to 2C, and then 3C.

“It is when the temperature moves up to 2C above the pre-industrial level, expected in the middle of this century - within the lifetime of many people alive today - that serious effects start to come thick and fast, studies suggest.”

When the temperature, the paper added, moves up to the 3C level, expected in the early part of the second half of the century, these effects will become critical. There is likely to be irreversible damage to the Amazon rainforest, leading to its collapse, and the complete destruction of coral reefs is likely to be widespread.