Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Global Warming

Global Warming


The Inevitable Energy Transition




  • The challenge of Global
    Climate Change     makes a shift away from fossil fuels necessary for
    planetary survival.



  • The impending decline in worldwide production of oil and
    natural gas means that the transition is inevitable --
    our only choice is whether to undertake it proactively and cooperatively, or
    put it off at our peril.



  • Peaking and decline of fossil fuel production provides an
    opportunity and a spur to action. 




More... 


President Bush said, "It's easier to deal with the climate
change issue if you've got the revenues and finances to invest in new
technologies that will change how we live, and at the same time enable us to
grow our economies." . NOTE: The $15 billion dollars spent by the USA for
war in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to reduce the ability of the USA to invest
in renewable energy systems and improving energy efficiency.


-------------------------------------


PRESTIGIOUS
SCIENCE ASSOCIATION ISSUES WARNING ON HUMAN-INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING


February 17, 2007


state by state carbon dioxide emissions


The board of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of the prestigious
journal Science
and the world's largest general scientific society, today issued its
first statement on global warming, attributing the Earth's recent warming to
human activity. "The
scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human
activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society," the
statement read. The release noted that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at
their highest concentration in 650,000 years, and AAAS president John Holdren
added that by the end of this century, global temperatures could head for levels
not seen in millions of years. The recent statement from AAAS marks another
high-profile announcement this year from scientific and environmental groups
calling for an immediate reduction of the causes of man-made climate change.
AAAS concluded that there must be a definitive political push to address global
warming. "We are already experiencing global climate change. It is time to
muster the political will for concerted action. Stronger leadership at all
levels is needed. The time is now. We must rise to the challenge." Scientists
recognized the important political implications of the statement. Susanne
Mosner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research stated: "The
statement is really strengthening the case and political momentum for cutting
greenhouse emissions."



2006 was the hottest
year ever recorded in the United States. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
"reached a record high in 2005," the United Nations reported in
November, warning that "global average concentrations of carbon dioxide and
nitrous oxide" will
be even higher in 2006. In 2000, carbon dioxide emissions were rising
less than 1 percent annually. Today they are rising more
than 2.5 percent annually, with 7.9
billion metric tons of carbon added globally in 2005 alone (up from 6.8
billion in 2000). The Energy Department’s latest
report projects America’s carbon dioxide emissions will increase
by one third from 2005 to 2030. Meanwhile, U.S. dependence on OPEC
nations for oil imports "has
risen to its highest level in 15 years." In September 2006, 70
percent of oil consumed in the United States came from foreign sources, up
from 58 percent in 2000. The impact of these historic environmental changes is
already being felt, and will grow more severe in the years to come. Arctic sea
ice coverage in March 2006 "was the lowest
in winter since measurements by satellite began in the early 1970s,"
and a team of NASA-funded scientists found that ice is melting so fast in the
Arctic "that
the North Pole will be in the open sea in 30 years." Research
published this year found increasing evidence that "global
warming is causing stronger hurricanes," that rainfall could drop by 20
percent by the end of the century, threatening the world's deserts "as
never before"; that climate change has spurred the recent "sudden
and dramatic” increase in the
number of wildfires and the length of the wildfire season, and will directly
"increase
the risk of forest fires, droughts and flooding over the next two
centuries"; one study found climate change will have a devastating
effect on America's bread basket, shifting crop production northward into
Canada.




IPCC ISSUES COMPREHENSIVE REPORT ON SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE



On February 2, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
released a summary of the current science of climate change. The summary,
directed at policymakers, is based on six years of review of scientific
literature by experts from around the world, convened under the auspices of the
IPCC's Working Group I. The report calls the evidence of climate warming
"unequivocal." The report finds that rates of both observed warming
and sea level rise have accelerated over the past century, and discusses other
important changes being observed, including more intense precipitation in some
regions, prolonged droughts in others, and intensification of hurricanes in some
tropical regions.


Pew
Center's coverage of the report



Pew
Center's summary of the report (93 KB pdf)



Pew
Center statement on the report



Facts
and Figures



"Sea
Level Rise - The State of the Science", a new Pew Center fact sheet



Hurricanes
and Global Warming Q&A



 


ENERGY
-- A NEW VISION FOR AMERICA'S ENERGY FUTURE


September 19,
2006


Former Vice
President Al Gore delivered a major speech on global warming at New York
University law school, calling for an immediate
freeze on carbon dioxide emissions to fight the effects of global warming.
"This is an opportunity for bipartisanship and transcendence, an
opportunity to find our better selves and in rising to meet this challenge,
create a better brighter future," Gore said. A new
report by the Center
for American Progress and the Worldwatch
Institute envisions a clean and efficient energy system which would decrease
our dependence on foreign oil, increase domestic security, shrink trade
deficits, revitalize rural communities, create hundreds of thousands of new
jobs, and curb the emissions that cause global warming. The study cites dynamic
growth in renewable energy sectors that should be utilized to "turn
abundant domestic sources -- including solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass
and ocean energy -- into transportation fuels, electricity, and heat." This
growth is "driving down costs and spurring rapid advances in
technologies" and opening up the possibility of a decentralized and
diversified energy market. The study features policy proposals that would help
realize this possibility by "jumpstarting the new energy industries while
minimizing the cost to American taxpayers" and reversing outdated policies
which subsidize fossil fuels. With nine
out of 10 voters supportive of plans to encourage alternative energy, the
time for reform is now.



Ice
Caps Are Melting Even in Winter, Global Warming Evidence Mounts


New Movie: The
Great Warming


"Wacky
Weather" Is Deadly Global Heating



First Half of 2006 is Warmest on Record for the United States


At the halfway point, 2006 is shaping up to be the warmest
year on record for the United States, according to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Based on preliminary data, the average
January to June temperature for the contiguous United States was 51.8 degrees
Fahrenheit, which is 3.4 degrees F above the average temperature during the 20th
century.


The heat is taxing electrical power systems while a continued
drought is depleting hydropower resources. In June, 45 percent of the contiguous
U.S. was in moderate to-extreme drought, an increase of 6 percent from May,
while 27 percent was in severe-to-extreme drought, an increase of 7 percent from
May. This year is also shaping up to be the sixth warmest on record for the
globe, with January to June average temperatures at 0.9 degrees F above the
20th-century mean. See the NOAA
press release and the full
analysis from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.


In case you haven't noticed, July turned out to be a warm one
as well, with a heat wave setting records across much of the country. So far,
U.S. utilities are meeting the challenge without any major power disruptions,
although many are calling on their customers to conserve energy. Electricity
supplies are strained and new electrical demand records are being set from coast
to coast. But don't take our word for it, see the press releases from the Long
Island Power Authority and the California Independent System Operator (PDF
26 KB). Download
Adobe Reader.



Confirmation of Earth's Rising Temperature



For the past couple of years, global warming skeptics have been bashing
climate researcher Michael Mann, claiming that fraud or errors created his
so-called "hockey stick" graph showing dramatic increases in the
temperature of the earth in the last decade. Now a panel of top climate
scientists convened by the National Academies of Science (the leading scientific
association in the United States) has vindicated Mann's conclusions in a new,
155-page report which finds that the Earth was hotter in the last few decades of
the 20th century than it has been over the last 400 years and possibly longer.


SOURCE: National Academies of Sciences, June 22, 2006

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11676


Heat Wave makes Global Warming 'Convert' out of Pat Robertson


August 4,
2006


Yesterday, on
the 700 Club, evangelical leader Pat Robertson declared himself "a
convert" on the issue of global warming. Robertson said that he has
"not been one who believed in global warming in the past." But now, he
said, "it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a
build up of carbon dioxide in the air." Robertson implored, "we really
need to do something on fossil fuels." But Robertson isn't the only
one feeling the heat and thinking twice. "More
Americans than ever disapprove of President Bush's handling of the
environment," according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, which found
56 percent believe the administration is doing too little protect the
environment, a 15 percent jump since 2001. Roughly three-quarters of
Americans say they have had to cut back on household spending because of devastating
energy bills and the rising cost of oil. One respondent noted, "At some
point you've just got to look at things realistically and realize we're
not leaving much of a legacy for our grandchildren if we don't address these
issues."










The American
Petroleum Institute, the industry's trade group, said: "While
consensus on climate change remains a work in progress, we do know
enough to take the risk seriously and to rule out inaction as an
option".

Science magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global
warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the
scientific
consensus the earth's temperature is rising due to human activity.		 Smoke stacks at sunset

GLOBAL
WARMING -- NEW REPORTS DETAIL HUMAN CAUSES AND DEVASTATION OF WARMING: A
pair of scientific reports released June 22, 2006 underscored the scientific
reality behind the causes of global warming and the threat that it poses. The
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a major 155-page report that
found that Earth’s rising temperature “is unprecedented for at least the
last 400 years and potentially
the last several millennia,” and that “human activities are responsible
for much of the recent warming.” The NAS study takes into account variations
in temperature due to natural causes and concludes
that the current warming trend is different. Human
activity is driving it. A second major climate study released yesterday by
the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) underscored the devastating
impact of global warming. The report
found, "Global warming accounted for around half of the extra
hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005,
while natural cycles were only a minor factor." The 2005 North
Atlantic hurricane season was the most active in recorded history, and caused an
unprecedented level of damage.








The
release of frozen methane due to the surprisingly rapid melting of
arctic permafrost is a largely unrecognized looming cataclysm. Life on
earth almost disappeared 251 million years ago, and again 55 million
years ago, apparently due to massive releases of methane. A runaway,
unstoppable, chain reaction was evidently caused by a temperature rise
of 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius). Based on the enormous
study of Global Warming, coordinated by scientists at Oxford University,
without radically new technology that temperature rise could occur even
before 2050. Burning our remaining fossil fuels at the current rate
could eliminate human, and most other, life on earth in less than 50
years!

    — Mark Goldes

An Inconvenient Truth


Source: Center
for American Progress Action Fund

May 25, 2006


Human activity is
polluting the earth and if we fail to take action now, our planet could be sent
"into a tail-spin
of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics
and killer heat waves." But some of the damage is already done. The Arctic
ice shelf is melting, polar
bears are drowning, and severe weather occurrences like hurricanes
and heat
waves are taking thousands of lives and causing millions in damages each
year. In the face of strong scientific consensus on the dangers and sources of
global warming, many members of the Bush administration and the right wing
continue to insist
it is all part of a harmless natural process. Yesterday President Bush said,
"[L]et's quit
the debate about whether greenhouse gases are caused by mankind or by natural
causes; let's just focus on technologies that deal with the issue." But
an effective solution will not be found without acknowledging the human role in
greenhouse gas emissions. "An
Inconvenient Truth," Vice President Al
Gore's new documentary that opened
yesterday in New York and Los Angeles, challenges these myths and provides
striking evidence that "[h]umanity
is sitting on a ticking time bomb." While the situation is severe, it's
not hopeless. See how you can take
action in the fight against global warming and help
America kick its oil habit.



CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE: Nineteen of the
20 hottest years on record have occurred
since 1980, with 2005 marking the warmest yet. But proof of global warming
goes beyond higher temperatures. In the far north, Inuit hunters have fallen
through ice, and villages
have lost ground to swelling seas. In the tropics, deluged islanders are making
plans for permanent evacuation. Seas worldwide have risen
four to eight inches in the last century; Massachusetts
alone has lost 65 acres a year. Malaria has spread
to higher altitudes in places such as the Colombia Andes, which is 7,000
feet above sea level. Scientists are considering creating an official Category 6
for hurricanes "as evidence mounts that hurricanes around the world have
sharply worsened over the past 30 years -- and all but a handful of hurricane
experts now agree this
worsening bears the fingerprints of man-made global warming." A study
published in Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on
global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not
a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth's temperature is
rising due to human activity. In 2005, a
top group of scientists convened by British Prime Minster Tony Blair met and
examined the catastrophic impacts of global average temperature increases. The
U.S. Climate Change Science Program, an intergovernmental agency, also concluded
that humans are driving the warming trend through greenhouse gas emissions,
noting "the observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot
be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effects of short-lived
atmospheric constituents such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone alone."



IT WILL GET WORSE: Global warming is bad
news for human life, despite the myths repeated by the right wing.
"When it's not even clear that the warming we've seen is hurting us -- many
argue that it's a boon, citing its benefits to agriculture and its potential
to make severe climates more hospitable," writes National Review associate
editor Jason Lee Steorts. But global warming won't just raise the earth's
temperature a few degrees. The reality will be, as Gore puts it, "what
someone has called 'a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.'" We
"have seen the impact of a couple of hundred thousand refugees from an
environmental crisis. Imagine
100 million or 200 million," said Gore yesterday on NBC's Today Show,
talking about how many people could be displaced if global warming continues at
its current pace. Assuming that it does, an increase in heat waves and a
deterioration in air quality "will
increase the risk of mortality and morbidity, principally in older age
groups and the urban poor," according to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Increases "in climate extremes (storms,
floods, cyclones, etc.) associated with climate change would cause physical
damage, population displacement, and adverse effects on food production,
freshwater availability and quality, and would increase the risks of infectious
disease epidemics, particularly in developing countries" and "negative
health impacts are anticipated to outweigh positive health impacts."
American Progress President and CEO John Podesta also notes the effect global
warming will have on the world's poor: "Between 260 and 320 million people
are likely to find themselves living
in malaria infested areas by 2080," and in "Southern Africa and
parts of the Horn, rainfall is predicted to decline by 10 percent by 2050,
worsening already serious food shortages."



THE ADMINISTRATION IS IGNORING IT: President Bush will be ignoring
"An Inconvenient Truth" when the movie opens in the nation's capital,
just as he has ignored the inconvenient truth of global warming throughout his
administration. In 2000, candidate Bush pledged to "establish
mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur
dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." That promise was
short-lived. One year later, Bush
backed away from his campaign promise and in 2003, his administration ruled
that carbon dioxide, the chief cause of global warming, was not a pollutant
and did not need to be regulated. The President still thinks that there is a
"fundamental debate" over whether climate change is "manmade or
natural," ignoring the consensus
of the scientific community and the opinion of his own Environmental
Protection Agency, which in 2002 stated that global warming "is real and
has been particularly strong within the past 20 years...due
mostly to human activities." Bush's beliefs about climate change have
gone beyond ignorance and have led to his administration's active suppression of
the truth. In 2002 and 2003, the Bush administration allowed Philip
A. Cooney, a former Exxon lobbyist with no scientific background, to doctor
the findings of some of the government's premiere climate documents, "play[ing]
down links between such [greenhouse gas] emissions and global warming."
James Hansen, head of NASA's top institute studying the climate, recently said
that he was being censored by the Bush administration from speaking out on
global warming. "In my more than three decades in the government I've never
witnessed such restrictions
on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," said
Hansen.





THE OIL INDUSTRY IS FABRICATING 'SCIENCE': The
overwhelming evidence on the urgency of global warming doesn't stop some
skeptics from denying climate change. The oil industry-funded Competitive
Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA)
have led the public relations effort to undercut the impact of Gore's film. CEI
has received $1.6
million from ExxonMobil since 1998 and accepted funding from other oil
companies through
the American Petroleum Institute. Earlier this month, CEI released a set of
misleading ads claiming "Greenland's
glaciers are growing." Actually, the study
cited by the ad found there was an increase in snow accumulation on Greenland's
interior. Other studies show that glaciers are thinning on Greenland's coastal
regions. Despite what CEI tried to argue, these findings fit with theories of
global warming because "the thinning of the margins and growth in the
interior Greenland is an expected
response to increased temperatures and more precipitation in a warmer climate.
These results present no contradiction to the accelerated sliding near the
coasts." Another scientist whose research CEI used in the ad blasted
the group for misrepresenting his research: "These television ads are a
deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming
debate. They are selectively using only parts of my previous research to support
their claims." The NCPA, which has received $390,000
from Exxon since 1998, has resorted to scare tactics, unleashing Sterling
Burnett on Fox News to compare watching Gore to Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Fox News has also jumped on the alarmist
bandwagon, airing a segment asking whether "An Inconvenient Truth"
could "destroy
our economy." In reality, a program to develop new sources of energy
and rebuild our transportation infrastructure will create
new jobs and stimulate the economy.


THE TASK AT HAND: According to
the "vast
majority of international scientists and peer-reviewed reports,"
climate change is a "serious growing threat." Unless concrete steps
are taken to mitigate the problem, "no country will be immune from the
extreme weather events and rising sea levels that scientists predict will
occur." The Task Force recommends 10 concrete but practical steps aimed at
ensuring that global warming does not exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. If global warming exceeds that point,
"the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly." The
recommendations of the Task Force include: taking greater advantage of existing
low and zero-carbon technologies, creating a global emissions trading market
and, for G8 countries, producing 25 percent of energy from renewable sources by
2025.


Burning dirty fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) to power cars
and homes and industry releases heat-trapping global warming gases into the
atmosphere, which alters the climate of the planet and throws weather systems
out of balance. Scientists warn that global warming will increase the
temperature of ocean water that fuels hurricanes, leading to stronger winds,
heavier rains and larger storm surges, and that doing nothing to reduce global
warming pollution will increase the severity of these costly extreme weather
events. Extreme weather events cost Americans nearly $20 billion in 2002.


While the U.S. is responsible for one-quarter of all the
pollution that causes global warming, politicians in Washington have taken no
steps to reduce global warming emissions, and the U.S. refused to join the 128
countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. This international global
warming pollution reduction treaty seeks to reduce emissions about five percent
below 1990 levels by 2008-2012 by setting up an emissions trading system and
will officially go into effect February 16, 2005.


The good news is that we already have technologies to
dramatically reduce global warming pollution through clean energy solutions. We
can make our cars, homes and buildings more energy efficient and switch to clean
renewable energy such as solar and wind power. The U.S. Climate Stewardship Act
seeks to cap global warming emissions at 2000 levels by 2010, by setting up an
emissions trading system and promoting clean energy solutions.


THE HIGH PRICE OF DOING NOTHING:
Addressing the climate change problem does not, in Blair's view, involve "drastic
cuts in growth or standards of living." In fact, investing in low and
zero-emissions technologies "provides the prospect of significant business
and economic opportunities." Meanwhile, the costs of doing nothing are
severe. Recently, the most extensive scientific modeling on global warming ever
conducted "found
that global temperatures could rise by up to 11°C (19°F) if emissions of
carbon dioxide continue unabated." That is more than five times the
increase the Task Force determined could have severe impacts in the form of
flooding and extreme weather events.


KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE:
Efforts to reduce global warming go hand in hand with enhancing oil security.
Low and zero-carbon energy sources, including many biofuels, are renewable and
can be produced domestically – reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
(Brazil, for example, already derives one-third of its transport fuel from
ethanol produced from sugar cane.) The Task Force recommends that the United
States and other major industrialized nations "divert
their agricultural subsidies to biofuels instead of food crops."


Speaking at the World Economic Forum on January 25, 2005,
Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of President Bush's closest allies, made his
position crystal clear: "if
America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must
be part of their agenda too." High on Blair's agenda is enlisting the
cooperation of all countries to tackle the problem of global warming. America
and Australia are the only two industrialized nations that have not ratified the
Kyoto accords, the global agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gasses that
cause global warming, which is scheduled to take effect on Feb. 16. Blair's
specific recommendations for action mirrored those just released by the
International Climate Change Task Force co-chaired by British MP Stephen Byers
and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and co-sponsored by the Center for American
Progress. American Progress CEO John Podesta said Blair's strong advocacy, along
with bipartisan support in Congress, could persuade the administration "to come
back to the table and get involved with this huge challenge facing
humanity." Read
the full report.



The National
Academy of Sciences said global warming could lead to "large, abrupt
and unwelcome" changes in the climate, and the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which is made up of 2,500 scientists —
warns that human-induced global warming could cause average temperatures to rise
by up to 10 degrees in less than 100 years.


Record heat waves
battered Europe in the summer of 2003 — the hottest
on that continent in 500 years — and more than
26,000 people died from heat-related causes. Studies have found that global
warming doubles the risk of events like the 2003 heat wave.


2004 was the 4th warmest year
on record. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990!


Greenhouse gasses are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a
result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface
ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact rising. The changes
observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human
activities. We can't exclude the possibility that natural variability has
contributed as well--but the main point remains--the earth is warming, and
humans must accept some responsibility for that warming.


It won't take the greatest extremes of warming to make life
uncomfortable for large numbers of people. Even slightly higher temperatures in
regions that are already drought or flood-prone would exacerbate those
conditions. In temperate zones, warmth and increased CO2 would make some crops
flourish — at first. But beyond 3° F. of warming, says Bill Easterling, a
professor of geography and agronomy at Penn State and a lead author of the IPCC
report, "there would be a dramatic turning point. U.S. crop yields would
start to decline rapidly". In the tropics, where crops are already at the
limit of their temperature range, the decrease would start right away. It's
time for action on global warming.


Mankind must turn to renewable forms of energy — because of
dwindling oil supplies and because of the mounting and unimpeachable evidence
that we have a profound carbon problem on our hands; that even if we discover
billions of new barrels of oil in the ground, we cannot keep burning them —
and pumping vast amounts of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere — without potentially catastrophic consequences.


According to the latest findings of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in order to stabilize greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere, global emissions must be reduced to at least 60 percent
below 1990 levels. That is a radical change in the way the world uses energy.
And to accomplish that, many people feel, will require nothing less than a new
industrial revolution, an overwhelming retreat from society's mass reliance on
the carbon fuels — oil, gas and coal — that have powered the global economy
for more than a hundred years.





Panel Supports a Controversial Report on Global Warming



By Andrew C. Revkin


June 22, 2006


An influential and controversial paper asserting that recent warming in the
Northern Hemisphere was probably unrivaled for 1,000 years was endorsed
Thursday, with a few reservations, by a panel convened by the nation's
pre-eminent scientific body.



The panel said that a statistical method used in the 1999 study was not the
best and that some uncertainties in the work "have been
underestimated," and particularly challenged the authors' conclusion that
the 1990's were probably the warmest decade in a millennium.


But in a 155-page report, the 12-member panel convened by the National
Academies said "an array of evidence" supported the main thrust of the
paper. Disputes over details, it said, reflected the normal intellectual clash
that takes place as science tests new approaches to old questions.


The study, led by Michael E. Mann, a climatologist now at Pennsylvania
State University, was the first to estimate widespread climate trends by
stitching together a grab bag of evidence, including variations in ancient tree
rings and temperatures measured in deep holes in the earth.


It has been repeatedly attacked by Republican lawmakers and some
industry-financed groups as built on cherry-picked data meant to create an
alarming view of recent warming and play down past natural warm periods.


At a news conference at the headquarters of the National Academies, several
members of the panel reviewing the study said they saw no sign that its authors
had intentionally chosen data sets or methods to get a desired result.


"I saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation," said one
member, Peter Bloomfield, a statistics professor at North
Carolina State University. He added that his impression was that the study
was "an honest attempt to construct a data analysis procedure."


More broadly, the panel examined other recent research comparing the
pronounced warming trend over the last several decades with temperature shifts
over the last 2,000 years. It expressed high confidence that warming over the
last 25 years exceeded any peaks since 1600. And in a news conference here on
Thursday, three panelists said the current warming was probably, but not
certainly, beyond any peaks since the year 900.


The experts said there was no reliable way to make estimates for
surface-temperature trends in the first millennium A.D.


In the report, the panel emphasized that the significant remaining
uncertainties about climate patterns over the last 2,000 years did not weaken
the scientific case that the current warming trend was caused mainly by people,
through the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.


"Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial
era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that
climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not
the primary evidence," the report said.


The 1999 paper is part of a growing body of work trying to pull together
disparate clues of climate conditions before the age of weather instruments.


The paper includes a graph of temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere that
gained the nickname "hockey stick" because of its vivid depiction of a
long period with little temperature variation for nearly 1,000 years, followed
by a sharp upward hook in recent decades.


The hockey stick has become something of an environmentalist icon. It was
prominently displayed in a pivotal 2001 United
Nations report concluding that greenhouse gases from human activities had
probably caused most of the warming measured since 1950. A version of it is in
the Al
Gore documentary "Inconvenient Truth."


Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Representative Joe L.
Barton, Republican of Texas, have repeatedly criticized the Mann study, citing
several peer-reviewed papers challenging its methods.


The main critiques were done by Stephen McIntyre, a statistician and
part-time consultant in Toronto to minerals industries, and Ross McKitrick, an
economist at the University of Guelph in Ontario.


They contended that Dr. Mann and his colleagues selected particular
statistical methods and sets of data, like a record of rings in bristlecone pine
trees, that were most apt to produce a picture of unusual recent warming. They
also complained that Dr. Mann refused to share his data and techniques.


On his Web log, climateaudit.org,
on Thursday, Mr. McIntyre said the panel's report seemed to have "two
completely distinct personalities," upholding specific criticisms of Dr.
Mann's methods, but still positing it was plausible that recent warming exceeded
any warm periods for 1,000 years.


In an interview, Dr. Mann expressed muted satisfaction with the panel's
findings. He said it clearly showed that the 1999 analysis had held up over
time.


But he complained that the committee seemed to forget about the many caveats
that were in the original paper. "Even the title of the paper on which all
this has been based is as much about the caveats and uncertainties as it is
about the findings," he said.


The paper, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, was called
"Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences,
Uncertainties and Limitations."


Raymond S. Bradley, a University
of Massachusetts geoscientist and one of Dr. Mann's co-authors, said that
the caveats were dropped mainly as the graph was widely reproduced by others.
(The other author of the 1999 paper was Malcolm K. Hughes of the University
of Arizona.)


The report was done at the request of Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the
New York Republican who is chairman of the House Science Committee, who called
last November for a review of the 1999 study and related research to clear the
air.


In a statement, Mr. Boehlert, who is retiring at the end of the year,
expressed satisfaction with the results, saying, "There is nothing in this
report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on
global climate
change — which doesn't rest primarily on these temperature issues, in any
event — or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was
legitimate scientific work."


Critics of the paper remain unconvinced.


A separate panel of statisticians is dissecting Dr. Mann's data and papers
for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, a spokesman for the chairman,
Mr. Barton, said.




Make GlobalWarming an Issue



By Walter Cronkite

The Philadelphia Enquirer

Monday 15, March 2004


     The contempt of the Bush
administration for environmentalists and their concerns is well known by now.
While evidence of man- made environmental damage mounts, the Bush team resists
its implications like a defeated army whose rear guard fights off its pursuers
as it retreats. That has been especially true of its handling of the most
serious of all environmental issues - global warming.


     First, the administration
claimed that global warming was the work of liberal hysterics and had been
discounted by "more sober scientists." Then, it admitted that it was
happening but said there was no proof humans caused it, or could fix it.


     Retreat No. 3 was the White
House discovery that, yes, indeed, some of the warming was due to human
activity, and we should take steps, say, to reduce emissions, but those steps
should be voluntary on the part of industry.


     There are two scientific
theories that have been gaining credence in recent years that challenge the
sanity of that kind of resistance to fact - and make no mistake about it, global
warming is a fact.


     Both theories begin with a
phenomenon that is taking place right now. Scientists are beginning to
understand climate as a complex interactive system that is affected by
everything from the emission of greenhouse gases, to deforestation, to the
condition of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers.


     It is a system with a feedback
mechanism. For example, higher temperatures lead to the melting of sea ice,
which exposes more water to the sun. The water absorbs more solar energy, which
accelerates global warming, and so on. Scientists fear that such feedbacks might
produce a self-sustaining and accelerating warming that is beyond human control.


     The second theory goes by the
name of Abrupt Climate Change. It suggests that catastrophic results of global
warming might not occur gradually, as most have expected, but quite suddenly -
within a few years. This theory also starts with the melting of glaciers and sea
ice, but involves the dilution of seawater's salinity - or salt content - that
results. That salt content is a key element in an ocean current that takes heat
from the tropics northward and cold water southward and in the process moderates
temperatures in the Eastern United States and much of Europe.


     The collapse of this so-called
conveyor could, in the worst case, produce a new ice age. The best case would
give us severe winters, increasingly violent storms, flooding, drought and high
winds around the globe, disrupting food production and energy supplies and
raising sea levels high enough to flood coastal cities and make them unlivable.


     These are not predictions but
real possibilities - far more possible today than scientists had previously
believed. And while the politicos in the White House continue to stick their
heads in the sand, some at the Pentagon have taken on the task of studying the
national- security implications of Abrupt Climate Change.


     What they came up with was a
world whose "carrying capacity" - the number of people the globe can
sustain - is being progressively lowered, a world where war becomes the rule,
not the exception, and where wars are no longer fought for ideological,
religious, or geopolitical reasons - but for resources and survival. This
unclassified Pentagon study, completed last fall, has been released to several
news organizations and was highlighted in the Feb. 9 edition of Fortune
magazine.


     One thing we have to keep in
mind: While these might only be worst-case scenarios, many of the conditions and
processes scientists think might trigger them already are present or under way.
Global warming is at least as important as gay marriage or the cost of Social
Security. And if it is not seriously debated in the general election, it will
measure the irresponsibility of the entire political class. This is an issue
that cannot, and must not, be ignored any longer.



1990s were Millennium's Warmest
Years




The 1990s was the warmest decade of the
past thousand years according to a top British meteorologist.


   

Click on an image to enlarge
it.


The Times of London said research by
Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia shows that seven of the world's 10
warmest years since records began were in the 1990s, including 1999.


Jones told the Times that
"although we do not have instrumental records going back further than the
mid-19th century for global temperatures, analysis of tree rings, ice cores,
corals and historical records indicate that the 1990s were the warmest decade
of the millennium".


Jones reported that data from the World
Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, also shows 1999 was the
fifth-warmest year on record based on global observations going back to 1860.


Temperatures in the 1990s were 0.33 C
higher than in 1961-90 and 0.7 C higher than those at the turn of the century.


Still, 1999 was a bit of a reprieve
from 1998.


"The rapid cooling of temperatures
in the equatorial Pacific has contributed to 1999 being significantly cooler
than in 1998, the hottest year on record", said David Parker of the British
Meteorological Office.


"This large, natural variability
is exactly what we expect to see superimposed on a long-term warming due to
manmade greenhouse gas emissions", he said. His forecast for 2000 shows
a high probability it will be "warmer than 1999 as the cold Pacific slowly
warms".


In November, researchers at the British
Meteorological Office said new evidence suggests that temperatures could rise
far higher than previously supposed due to a huge surge in carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gasses during the first half of the 21st century.


That could increase droughts,
hurricanes and food shortages and raise sea levels. Unless carbon dioxide
emissions are cut, the researchers said, the average land temperature could be
six degrees hotter than the predicted 41 degrees Fahrenheit.







Meteorologists Issue Climate Warning


December 24, 1999



James Baker, undersecretary of the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Peter Ewins, head of the
British Meteorological Office, sent a joint letter to London’s
"Independent" newspaper warning that "our climate is now changing
rapidly and it’s important we take action now". The letter’s frank tone
breaks with the conservative approach normally adopted in public by climate
change scientists traditionally reticent about venturing into the political
arena. "We’re now coming clean and saying we believe the evidence is
almost incontrovertible, that man has an effect and therefore we need to act
accordingly. As the average temperature goes up we can expect more extreme
events — floods, drought,
more severe storms. We now need to persuade the business community that to act
now is the responsible thing to do". They said that expanding energy
efficiency and renewable energy presented profitable opportunities for
businesses trying to pump less carbon dioxide into the air.



Global Warming—What’s the Boiling Point?



More and more scientists across the globe
agree that climate change caused by greenhouse gas emission is happening! It is
argued that by 2100, worldwide temperatures would be 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius higher
than today! What does that mean? It means that ocean levels will rise &
thousands of miles of coastline will be submerged;  thousand of plants and
animals may go extinct; increased chaotic weather conditions; and much more! 


At this point, hundreds of nations across
the globe are ratifying the Kyoto protocol. An international treaty to reduce
global greenhouse gases. The United States is one of the few nations that
refuses to support it! The US government, instead of taking action, has decided
that we should study the phenomenon of global warming for another ten years!



Find
out more! http://www.care2.com/go/z/4527



American Geophysical
Union Speaks Out on Climate



March 1, 1999



After months of
internal discussion, the American Geophysical Union, a prominent international
scientific body of 35,000 Earth and planetary scientists, made a bold move into
the public global warming debate by unveiling a strongly worded position
statement on climate change and greenhouse gases.


The move signifies
a new political role for the high-profile body, which has traditionally
distanced itself from any type of advocacy work by its members. It also marks
the scientific group’s first foray into environmental policy, as prior
position statements have focused on research and education issues.


The paper
reiterates several generally accepted fundamentals of climate change, including
the role of humans in increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases, the link between enhanced greenhouse gas effects and rising
surface temperatures, and the unusual increase in global temperatures over the
last 150 years. It noted as well that “there is no known geologic precedent
for the transfer of carbon from the Earth’s crust to the atmosphere,” in
amounts comparable to fossil-fuel-burning, without simultaneous changes in the
climate system.


The paper also
addresses the relationship between climate science and policymaking. Present
understanding of the Earth’s climate, it argues, provides a “compelling
basis for legitimate public concern” over future global and regional climate
changes resulting from higher greenhouse-gas concentrations, including higher
surface temperatures, increases in precipitation and evaporation rates, rising
sea levels, and changes in the biosphere.


While acknowledging
significant uncertainties, the statement stresses that “the present level of
scientific uncertainty does not justify inaction in the mitigation of
human-induced climate change.” This point was reaffirmed at a press conference
unveiling the position statement, where Eric Sundquist, a research geologist
with the U.S. Geological Survey, told reporters, “we want to make sure that
scientific uncertainty is not used to justify political inaction.”


In closing, the
statement encourages scientists worldwide to take part in international programs
of research, scientific assessments and policy discussions on climate change.
The AGU also recommends the development and evaluation of strategies to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions, to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and to
prepare for the impacts of climate change.


(Seth Dunn is a
member of the Worldwatch
Institute research
staff.)



Click on the image to
enlarge it.

The surface of the
vast ice sheet in Greenland melted more during the summer of 2002 than at any
time in the 24 years that conditions have been tracked. Some of the melting is
due to accumulation of dark dust
that increases absorption of solar energy. A large percentage of the dust comes
from coal fired power plants.



Alaska,
No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn and Sag


By Timothy Egan, June
16, 2002


Warming of Alaska has
dire consequences for state; effects of 5.4 degree rise in Alaska's temperature
over last 30 years include buckling highways, shoreline erosion and forests
killed by beetles; in Alaska, rising temperatures, whether caused by greenhouse
gas emissions or nature in prolonged mood swing, are not a topic of debate or an
abstraction; Senator Ted Stevens says that no place is experiencing more
startling change from rising temperatures than Alaska and that problems will
cost Alaska hundreds of millions of dollars.



Global Warming Threatens Health of World's
Oceans


Since 1800 the
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by nearly 36 percent. However,
this reflects only half of the CO2 that has been emitted during this same time,
leaving room for some doubt as to the urgency of global warming. Recent studies
show that the "missing" CO2 has been absorbed into the oceans. And
now, studies are demonstrating that the increased amount of CO2 in the oceans is
threatening ocean life.



The oceans absorbed 48 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted
into the air by humans over the last two centuries? At that rate, impacts from
global warming could damage the ability for many ocean creatures to survive.


Between 1800 and 1994 the oceans absorbed 118 billion metric
tons of carbon — equaling the weight of 118 billion small cars! What happens
now? According to the study, the increased carbon can affect the acidity of the
oceans, slow the development of coral reefs and shelled sea life — creatures
that represent the base of the food chain in the ocean. Such a disruption to the
food chain can severely affect the balance of ocean life with potentially
catastrophic results.



British Scientists Say Carbon Dioxide Is Turning the Oceans Acidic




By Kenneth
Chang

July 1, 2005


Whether or not it contributes to global warming, carbon
dioxide is turning the oceans acidic, Britain's leading scientific organization
warned yesterday.


In a report by a panel of scientists, the organization, the
Royal Society, said the growing acidity would be very likely to harm coral reefs
and other marine life by the end of the century.


"I think there are very serious issues to be
addressed," the panel's chairman, Dr. John Raven of the University of
Dundee in Scotland, said in an interview. "It will affect all organisms
that have skeletons, shells, hard bits that are made of calcium carbonate."


The 60-page report was timed to influence next week's Group of
8 economic summit meeting. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, president of
the group this year, has been calling for strong action to limit climate change.


Unlike forecasts of global warming, which are based on complex
and incomplete computer models, the chemistry of carbon dioxide and seawater is
simple and straightforward.


The burning of fossil fuels by cars and power plants releases
more than 25 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year.
Roughly a third of that is absorbed by the oceans, where the gas undergoes
chemical reactions that produce carbonic acid, which is corrosive to shells.


"That's indisputable," Dr. Raven said. "I don't
think anyone can get around that. It's really rock-solid high school
chemistry."


The pH scale, which measures the concentration of hydrogen,
runs from 1, the most acidic and highest concentration of ions, to 14, the most
alkaline, with almost no ions. Ocean water today is somewhat alkaline, at 8.1,
about 0.1 lower than at the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries
ago.


But like the magnitude scale of earthquakes, one unit on the
pH scale reflects a change of a factor of 10. The 0.1 pH change means there are
now 30 percent more hydrogen ions in the water.


Depending on the rate of fossil fuel burning, the pH of ocean
water near the surface is expected to drop to 7.7 to 7.9 by 2100, lower than any
time in the last 420,000 years, the Royal Society report said.


Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental
studies at the Cato Institute, the libertarian research group based in
Washington that is skeptical that global warming will cause serious
environmental harm, pointed out that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere had
been higher for 90 million of the last 100 million years.


But Dr. Ken Caldeira, a research scientist at the Carnegie
Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, Calif., and a member of
the Royal Society panel, said the difference was that the current carbon dioxide
release was occurring quickly, over just two centuries. In the past, water from
the deeper ocean would have had time to mix, diluting the effect of the carbon
dioxide. "If we put it out over a few hundred thousand years, we'd have
nothing to worry about," he said.


The pH change is likely to slow the rate of growth of coral
reefs, which are already suffering from warmer temperatures and pollution, the
report said.


"By mid-century, 2050-ish, we will probably see
noticeable gaps within coral reefs," Dr. Raven said. "Any weakening of
their skeleton can make them more prone to storm events."


The increased acidity could also reduce populations of
plankton with calcium carbonate shells, disrupting the food chain and hurting
some fisheries, the scientists said.




type=" " version="1.0">





The
Global Warming Dropout



To enlarge the cartoon, click on it.



Eileen Claussen,  President of the Pew
Center on Global Climate Change, wrote, “In its business-as-usual approach to
climate change, the Bush administration is increasingly out of step not only
with other industrialized powers, but also with the growing support in this
country for action to prevent global warming. The administration’s oddly
two-sided report to the United Nations brings the White House into the
scientific mainstream on the subject — acknowledging that human activity is
probably the cause of global warming and that America itself faces serious
consequences — but at the same time lays out a strategy ensuring that American
emissions of greenhouse gases will continue rising sharply for at least a
decade.”



-- Source: http://www.pewclimate.org/













  "It was not until we saw the picture
of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless
this planet is — something that we
must hold in our arms and care for."

      
— Margaret Mead

To enlarge a
picture, click on it.



Global
warming cartoons



NOTE: If you can't stand the heat, don't mess with Mother
Nature.



One interesting aspect of the debate on global warming is that
there is a "debate." Earth scientists — even those at Texas A&M
— have no doubt that it is happening and happening faster than their
original models predicted. But as so often happens, public debate is deformed by
corporate money. A corporate lobby called the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC), held a recent conference. One of the talks was on the greenhouse
effect, given by a professor from someplace, and the theme of his talk was that
the greenhouse effect is nothing but a scam being advanced by environmental
terrorists to destroy business in America."


As Upton Sinclair observed, "It is difficult to get a
man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."


What concerns me about anyone
pretending to expertise describing global warming as "a scam advanced by
environmental terrorists to destroy business" is that it sends public
debate into cuckoo-land. It's not as though the measurements and readings taken
by several thousand earth scientists around the world and by the United States
government are under question. One can certainly debate what the findings mean
in terms of global warming — how much, how fast — and scientists do have
differences on those points.



Facts
are Stubborn Things


Robert
F. Kennedy Jr.

May 17, 2005

Source: www.stopglobalwarming.org


For 15 years King Coal and Big Oil, led by the Exxon
Corporation, have funded dozens of Washington think
tanks stocked with aberrant scientists (known as biostitutes) to persuade
the public and the press that the science is still out on global warming and
give political cover to the industries’ indentured servants on Capitol Hill --
corporate toadies like James
Inhofe and Tom
DeLay.


They have also relied heavily on shills like Rush Limbaugh to
delude the broader public with their junk science. Limbaugh’s 1993 book,
"The
Way Things Ought to Be," argues
[pdf] that global warming is a hoax -- a point of view he regularly espouses on
his popular radio show.


Now, the very industries for which Limbaugh has ransomed his
integrity are turning on him and his junk science cronies. Last month, Cinergy,
one of America’s largest coal-burning utilities, devoted 35 pages of its annual
report to global warming. And last week, Exxon
and General
Electric launched massive new campaigns to develop technology to deal with
climate change. Even these companies recognize that the facts about global
warming are no longer deniable and they have left loyal mouthpieces like
Limbaugh high and dry.




The
Global Oxygen Crisis


If you're a fan of fiction writer,
Clive Cussler -- or of actor Matthew McConaughey -- you'll recall that the plot
of one of Cussler's "Dirk Pitt" novels, which was made into the action
adventure thriller Sahara, involves a man-made toxic red tide bloom
that threatens to destroy the ocean's phytoplankton, which produce half
of the world's oxygen, as well as consume one hundred million tons of
carbon-dioxide daily.


In a strange and serious twist of fate,
it turns out that global warming is not only heating the planet, it's also
starving the ocean's phytoplankton.


Global warming is causing
stratification of the world's oceans, which is preventing the up-welling of
colder, nutrient-rich waters on which the phytoplankton depend to fix
atmospheric carbon dioxide. But as their numbers decline, they absorb less
CO2, creating a vicious climatic feedback loop.




Global Warming "Will Cancel Out Western Aid and Devastate
Africa"


     By Andrew Grice

    The Independent UK


    Thursday 13 July 2006


    Climate change could have a
devastating impact on Africa, wiping out all the benefits from the measures to
help the continent agreed by the world's richest nations last year.


    The warning will be issued by the
British Government today when it announces plans to bring poor countries into
the next round of international discussions to combat global warming.


    The serious threat posed to the
developing world will be highlighted when Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State
for International Development, publishes his first White Paper setting out his
department's strategy. It will warn that people in poor nations, while producing
much lower carbon emissions than rich countries, could be the biggest victims of
climate change.


    They will have to cope with more
droughts, more extreme temperatures and sudden and intense rainfall causing
greater food insecurity, loss of income, higher death rates and more diseases.
Research by the department to assess the impact on Africa by 2050, taking
account of poverty forecasts, suggests that southern Africa and the Sahel, the
Great Lakes areas and the coastal zones of eastern and western Africa will be
particularly at risk.


    In some parts of east Africa, higher
rainfall and and temperatures will help crop production in the short term but
there will be more frequent crop failures in the future. "What is clear is
that Africa appears to have some of the greatest burdens of climate change
impacts, certainly from the human health and agricultural perspective," the
research concluded.


    "It is a region with a generally
limited ability to cope and adapt; and it has some of the lowest per capita
emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. The likely
impacts of climate change therefore present a global ethical challenge as well
as a development and scientific challenge."


    Mr. Benn will pledge that British
ministers and officials will help developing nations address climate change. He
will signal a shift under which, instead of relying on help from rich nations on
dealing with the consequences, governments from poor countries play a key role
in formulating the world's response to the issue. That would mean developing
countries joining talks on a new international agreement on the threat to the
planet, called "Kyoto 2."


    Mr. Benn does not want the world to
impose carbon emissions targets on poor countries, which they would be reluctant
to accept, but wants them to form part of a new global consensus on the issue.
In the long run, that could allow them to "sell" carbon emissions
permits to raise money for their own development.


    Mr. Benn said yesterday: "Climate
change is happening faster than any of us anticipated even five years ago. It is
the most pressing global challenge of all, yet does not have a global framework
for solving it. Climate Change knows no boundaries and neither should we."


    Gordon Conway, the chief scientific
adviser at the Department for International Development, said: "It is a
phenomenon that occurs in a world that is already severely challenged. This is
especially true of Africa where the existence of widespread poverty, hunger and
poor health already affect millions of people. All prognostications suggest
climate change will make their lives even worse."


    Tony Blair said he hoped Africa and
climate change would be discussed by G8 leaders at their summit in St Petersburg
this weekend. But there is little sign of major progress at a meeting likely to
be dominated by energy supplies. Jacques Chirac, the French President,
criticized the US for blocking progress on climate change. He said: "Global
threats require global responses. We shall not solve the problem of global
warming if we each go our own way or increase the number of unilateral or
partial solutions. This is particularly true for global warming. I am concerned
at the weakening of the international regime for climate change. We must reverse
this trend."


    President Chirac said the seven G8
members party to the Kyoto protocol snubbed by America, should set an example by
respecting their commitments, as Europe and France were doing. "It is up to
them to show the way forward for the post-2012 period," he said. "We
seek an ambitious agreement commensurate with the threat posed to humanity, one
committing all the G8 countries, including the United States, as well as
emerging countries."



Act or
Step Aside


The 2007
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report
represents "history's
most definitive statement of scientific consensus on climate change."
Its main findings: global warming is "unequivocal" and human activity
is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in
temperatures since 1950. If left unchecked, it will destroy our habitat.
"It's time to end the debate and act," House Science and Technology
Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) says. "All
the naysayers should step aside." This morning, Gordon chaired
Congress' first hearings on the findings of the IPCC (details here).
These proceedings should be the beginning of a thorough and sustained
examination of the report's findings -- by Congress,
the
media, and ordinary citizens. The IPCC report cannot fall off the radar,
because the alternative is waiting for disaster to compel us into action.
"Does it take a crisis to get people to go along a new path or can they respond
to a series of rational, incremental gains in knowledge?" asked Ralph
J. Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences. "That's the
question." If we answer that question correctly, the good news is there is
still "an
enormous amount the international community could do to avert climate change
if swift action was taken," says Dr. Graeme Pearman, who helped draft the
report. (A good first step: the aggressive Global
Warming Reduction Act sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John Kerry
(D-MA).)



THE PROCESS: Climate change skeptic Sen.
James Inhofe (R-OK) says the IPCC's report is "a
political document, not a scientific report." In fact, the power of the
IPCC findings are in their exhaustive scientific rigor. "The main science
report -- more than 1,600 pages in its draft form -- was compiled by 150
scientists as main authors, another 400 scientists as contributing authors, a
team of review editors, and some 600 reviewers. The document went through
two rounds of reviews. And unlike past efforts, review editors required
chapter authors to respond to each responsible review comment."
Researchers utilize the latest technology -- scientists at the federal
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory "devoted
half of their supercomputer's time for a year running models for the latest
report" -- and "every
government in the world" approves the summary for policymakers released
last week. "Only points that were considered indisputable survived this
process," one climate scientist notes. "This
is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary."
Indeed, the process is at times so ploddingly exhaustive that "many
top U.S. scientists reject [the] rosier numbers" about sea level rise
because the calculations "don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off
of big ice sheets" in Greenland and Antarctica.



THE SHIFT: The findings of the new report
are most dramatic when compared to language used in previous IPCC statements.
The panel's first report released in 1990 found that rising temperatures were
"broadly consistent with prediction of climate models, but it is also of
the same magnitude as natural climate variability," meaning "the
observed increase could
be largely due to this natural variability." Five years later, the IPCC
argued that a "balance of evidence suggests a discernible
human influence on global climate." In 2001 report cited "new
and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50
years is attributable to human activities." In the latest report, it states
that warming is "very
likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse
gas concentrations."



WORLD CHANGING: Continued global
warming is predicted in the new report, leading to a "huge
disruption to agriculture, more floods, heatwaves, desertification and melting
glaciers." Droughts will be longer, flooding rains will be rarer
but heavier. "Cyclones
will hit harder. Violent storms and extreme heatwaves will strike more
frequently. Evaporation will suck up scarce inland water. Sea levels will
creep up half a meter. Oceans will be so acidic that in some places shells and
reefs will dissolve." The increase in hurricane and tropical cyclone
strength since 1970 "more
likely than not" can be attributed to man-made global warming, the
report finds. Australia, currently in the grip of its worst recorded drought, is
warned that the Great Barrier Reef will "become
'functionally extinct' because of coral bleaching."



THE HUMAN TOLL: The impact of global
warming will be catastrophic, "forcing
hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands,
particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of
immigrants" -- dubbed climate
refugees -- "whose movements will strain the economies of even the most
affluent countries." Climate change will bring
water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people by the end of the
century; an additional 200 million to 600 million people across the world
"would face food shortages in another 70 years, while coastal flooding
would hit another 7 million homes." "The message is that every region
of the earth will have exposure," says Pearman. As the poles warm and
substantial parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt or
disintegrate, "we may be essentially remaking the face of the Earth by
putting a lot more water into the ocean, reconfiguring
the coastal zone, drowning areas like river deltas, where tens of millions of
people live in some countries, like the Netherlands, Bangladesh, the
Louisiana delta in this country." Princeton climatologist Michael
Oppenheimer calls it "the most pervasive and most threatening consequence
of global warming. It will be very expensive. And once it gets under way, it's
essentially impossible to stop." Meanwhile, the poor in developing
countries "will
suffer the most, even though they are the least responsible for global
warming," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out, as "the
annual costs of climate change impacts in exposed developing countries could
range from several
percent to tens of percent of gross domestic product."



THE SPIN: A White House letter laments
that, following the release of the 2007 IPCC report, "a number of media
reports perpetuated inaccuracies that the President's concern about climate
change is new." Actually, the White House says, "Beginning in June
2001, President Bush has consistently acknowledged climate change is occurring
and humans
are contributing to the problem." But just last year, Bush claimed
there is still "a
debate over whether [global warming] is man-made or naturally caused."
Moreover, the White House says, "climate change has been a
top priority since the President’s first year in office." In fact,
Bush has consistently rejected stronger measures to combat climate change, even
as carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have increased
by 354 million metric tons since 2001, including the "largest
annual amount ever produced by any country on record." He has also cut NASA's
earth science budget by 30 percent since taking office. Last week, Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman again rejected the idea of limiting U.S. emissions.
"We
are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the
world, so it’s really got
to be a global solution," he said. In fact, the U.S. emits a
quarter of global carbon emissions, more than any other country, despite
having only 5 percent of the world's population.


 


Additional Sources of Information:











global_warming.gif (97860 bytes)


 Global
Warming: The Complete Briefing

Global Warming
and the resulting climate change is one of the most serious
environmental problems facing the world community. This book is the most
comprehensive guide available to the subject. A world-renowned expert,
Sir John Houghton explores the scientific basis of global warming and
the likely impacts of climate change on human society, before addressing
the action that could be taken by governments, by industry and by
individuals to mitigate the effects.


Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)