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CLIMATE
CHANGE
The
impacts of global climate change are already visible as increasingly
unstable weather patterns cause increased human suffering through severe
storm damage and increasingly frequent crop failures. These impacts
will increase throughout the coming century unless action is taken now
to slow the rate of global climate change.
Current climate
change calculations suggest that glacier melt could raise sea levels
to drastic heights in the 21st century. Until 2001, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change was estimating that glacier melt alone would
be responsible for a sea level rise of from 1 to 23 cm by 2100. Now,
using new data from North American glaciers, researchers from the University
of Colorado at Boulder calculate that glacier melt could be responsible
for a 23 to 46 cm rise by 2100. Combined
with other forces, such as ocean warming, sea levels could surge as
much as 89 cm by the close of the current century. To put this in perspective,
a mean sea level rise of 30 cm would correspond to an average 30-meter
retreat of shoreline. This research was reported at the 2002 annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Boston.
SOME
QUICK STATISTICS
These statistics come from the New
York Times climate change page.
- 1998, 1999 and 2000
(the last years for which data was available at the time of the
report) had the three warmest winters on record.
- 1998 and 1999 were the
warmest years ever recorded, according to Federal data.
- Since the end of the
last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, earth has warmed 5 to 9 degrees.
That's an average increase of only 0.00035 degrees per year during
a "natural" planetary warming trend.
- By contrast, scientists
predict the planet will warm by 2 to 6 degrees over the next 100
years if green house gas emissions are not cut. That's an average
increase of 0.04 degrees per year... a substantially faster increase
than the planet's natural rate of temperature fluctuation.
In
the News:
-
Global
Warming Hits Species All Over the World, according to a
recent study published in the journal Nature.
-
Antarctic
island called a unique climate-change lab. An unexpectedly
rapid warming of lakes on a desolate Antarctic island provides compelling
evidence of the environmental impact wrought by rising global temperatures
-
Climate
Change influenced the decline of ancestral Puebloan ("Anasazi")
society. Using mineral bands in stalagmites from New Mexican
caves to track climate change over the past 4,000 years, scientists
have found that wet and dry periods helped drive major cultural
shifts among ancient people in the American Southwest. Agricultural
advances, such as the introduction of corn and cotton in the region,
the debut of ceramics, and the abandonment of the famed pueblo cliff
dwellings, all correlate closely to changes in climate, University
of New Mexico researchers Victor Polyak and Yemane Asmerom report
in the October 5th issue of the journal Science.
Other
Resources
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