Is Global Warming Heating Up?
I would like to think so. I feel like I’m seeing more articles on the subject in recent weeks and months, but it’s hard to say for sure since I’m exposed to environmental news on a daily basis.
Seeing an article this morning from USA Today was yet another reminder that the issue does seem to be getting more mainstream attention. I think this unusually warm winter (although not necessarily linked) has also helped get people to sit up and take notice.
The USA Today article focuses on a speech given recently by NASA scientist James E. Hansen in which he (like many others these days) calls for immediate and significant worldwide action.
Here are some exerpts:
“Global warming is already starting, and there’s going to be more of it. I think there is still time to deal with global warming, but we need to act soon. Humans now control global climate, for better or worse,” Hansen said Tuesday at an annual gathering of meteorologists.
Hansen, who came under fire from the White House after a December 2005 lecture in which he called for prompt reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming, delivered his keynote speech by satellite at the 14th annual Operation Sierra Storm meeting at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. Global warming is the theme of the conference.
Hansen, who said he was not speaking for NASA, said that after the warming of the past three decades, the world is within 1°C of its warmest period in the past 400,000 years. He predicted that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the same rate, the warming this century will approach 3°C, or about 5°F.
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Hansen’s call came one day after the chief of the United Nations’ effort against climate change said that despite widespread recognition of the seriousness of global warming, a lack of leadership has created a sense of helplessness.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told the Associated Press during a visit to Paris that he will ask the new U.N. secretary-general to coordinate a worldwide response and organize a conference of world leaders.
Such a meeting would be a first step toward a post-Kyoto agreement on climate change, he said. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires 35 industrial nations to cut production of globe-warming greenhouse gases by an average 5% below 1990 levels by 2012, when the accord expires.
Original article: Scientist: Global warming could melt ice caps, eliminate half of Earth’s species
I truly hope I’m not imagining things, and that 2007 ends up being the year for serious environmental action on a global scale!
Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, greenhouse effect, greenhouse gas, co2, al gore, inconvenient truth, nasa, kyoto, emissions
Written by Bentley on January 15th, 2007 with
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