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Top German scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber warns that climate change is now happening much more quickly than anyone thought was possible.

In an interview with Saarbruecker Zeitung newspaper Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects and acts as an adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate-change issues, said that “the threats posed by climate change are worse than those imagined by most governments.”

“In nearly all areas, the developments are occurring more quickly than it has been assumed up until now. We are on our way to a destabilization of the world climate that has advanced much further than most people or their governments realize.”

Schellnhuber points out that the Arctic ice is melting faster than previously expected and says that “the entire climate pattern at the North Poll has been disrupted to the extent of causing irreversible change.”

The Arctic sea ice is melting more quickly than expected. There are also signs that the entire climate pattern at the North Poll has been disrupted to the extent of causing irreversible change.

For the Arctic, the global warming which has already occurred of 0.8 degrees Celsius has already stepped over the line, Schellnhuber said. If Greenland’s ice cap melts completely, water levels will rise by seven meters (23 feet).

“The current coastline will no longer exist, and that includes Germany,” he said.

Schellnhuber says that to be able to stop global warming the industrial countries need to decrease their emissions by 80-90% and that by 2020 “this process has to be well underway”.