Global warming is likely worse than originally was thought

Posted at 9:29 p.m. PST Sunday, Feb. 18, 2001

BY SETH BORENSTEIN

Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Effects of global warming are here already and are likely to get far worse than previously expected, killing millions of people and displacing tens of millions more over the next century, a panel of the world's top environmental scientists is set to announce today in Geneva.

The experts, participants in the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), forecast more tropical diseases, more droughts and floods and more severe weather in general. They also foresee more deaths from heat waves.

Changes will be especially dramatic for the globe's coastal cities where increased flooding will affect as many as 200 million people.

People living in already warm climates will suffer crop failures, famines and acute water shortages, the scientists predict. More northerly areas will experience warmer weather, richer farmland and higher crop production.

``You're going to feel the impacts no matter what,'' said Michael MacCracken, executive director of a U.S. government committee studying the effects of climate change on Americans. ``You're going to have to adapt.''

The U.N.-sponsored panel forecasts an increase in the world's average temperature of from 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the next hundred years. By comparison the world's average temperature rose 1.1 degree in the 20th century.

North America, panelists conclude, will be the continent least hurt. Gains in crops will be tempered by more droughts. Fewer people will die of the cold, but some diseases now considered tropical, like encephalitis, dengue fever and malaria, are likely to push their way north with warmer temperatures.

The increased emission of gases like carbon dioxide from the burning of oil and coal is what's causing warmer temperatures, scientists say. These so-called greenhouse gases collect in the Earth's upper atmosphere where they slow the natural loss of the sun's heat into space, just as a greenhouse does.

Effects now observable include earlier flowering dates for trees and plants and shifts in bird and butterfly migration and birth patterns. In the European Alps, some plants are appearing further north -- moving at a rate of 13 feet a decade -- due to warmer weather.

The growing season in Europe is increasing rapidly.

In the Himalayan and Tianshan mountain ranges of Asia, two-thirds of the glaciers are retreating: melting faster than they are being created. In the Arctic and Antarctic, the area of sea ice has decreased 10 to 15 percent in about 20 years.

A separate panel of experts reported last month that temperatures really were rising at a worrisome rate. This report describes the effects. Next month, a third panel will report on what can be done.

While most scientists agree that global warming is real, human-caused and a threat, the Bush administration is not so sure. It has negotiated a two-month delay on international talks to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

In her confirmation hearings last month, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said: ``There is beginning to be more of a consensus that global warming is occurring. There is still disagreement as to the causes and the long-term future.''

-- Swissrose (cellier@azstarnet.com), February 19, 2001

Answers

The truth is that there is absolutely NO agreement on the GW/CC [global warming/climate change] 'issue'. Anyone with an open mind can quickly verify this by doing using a search engine such as 'dogpile.com' with the phrase "global warming", "critics of global warming", etc.

Those who attempt to sell their Earth-Centered psuedo religion with endless, mindless chants of "global warming" have a desparate and fixed agenda - they want to have the UN assume full and complete control over all the Earth's resources and be given the ability to reach deep into your pocket to transfer your assets to the "third world". Those doubting this have only to read the appropriate UN documents on "Climate Change", the so-called "Earth Charter", "Agenda 21", etc.

There is a peculiar mindset to the GW/CC-ers. It really bothers them when someone brings up the previous massive climate changes in Earth's past. Those naturally occuring cycles don't fit in well with their GW/CC natterings, so they tend to ignore them. Try discussing that with GW/CC proponents...see how far you get.

The GW/CC'ers love to mix Leftist politics with Science...the end result being terrible junk science which doesn't stand the light of day.

http://www.sepp.org/faq.html

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html

http://www.junkscience.com/

http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search? q=critics+of+global+warming&geo=no&fs=web

http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html

http://members.aol.com/iceagenow/

http://www.sightings.com/general6/canadiansci.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1017000/1017204.stm

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/~drm/history/DOCS/brown.html

http://www.pvbr.com/Issue_1/global.htm

Just a few of dozens of websites that will show you there's a spectrum of opinions on the GW/CC 'issue'. Never believe anyone who's trying to sell you something...or trying to reach deep into your pockets to fix a real or imagined problem by 3pm this afternoon.

-- GlobalWarming (Is@Baloney.com), February 19, 2001.

This may be indeed be a natural swing of the climate pendulum. It remains that increased CO2 and other atmospheric gases enhance the warming. If we are not the cause, we are certainly no help to the situation.

In my home, I do not wait until the place is unlivably filthy before I sweep, dust, mop and scrub. For some things (e.g., telephone receivers, toilet bowls) I do not even wait for the crud to reach visible levels.

Should I not wish to be as diligent a housekeeper with my planet?

-- L. Hunter Cassells (mellyrn@nist.gov), February 20, 2001.

While there is debate about Global Warming in the scientific community, most of it centers about how much damage we have done, and how best to combat it. Very few scientists not on the corporate payroll still deny its existence. Yes, there have been global temperature shifts in the past, but analysis of arctic ice-cores show that world carbon dioxide levels have never been so high or risen so fast as they did in the last century. Any claims that discussing these period changes in climate throw environmentalists are as bogus as Mr. Baloney's e-mail address.

The real problem is that we are on a roller coaster, we hear the ride clicking, but we are not sure when we are going to reach the top, or what will happen after we do.

For example, the Gulf Stream runs through the Atlantic from the equator to the arctic. It cools the tropics and warms the poles. As increasing warm weather melts the icecaps, the sea becomes less saline. Excess fresh water may cause the Gulf Stream to slow down making to tropics hotter and the poles colder. This in turn could cause the polar ice to spread and trigger another ice age -- a far cry from a warmer world.

Alternately, a rise in temperature in the tropics could cause the ocean bottom temperatures to rise enough to release vast amounts of methane gas from the methyl hydrates currently frozen on the ocean floors. Methane has far more of a greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, and could cause global temperatures to go off the scale.

Then again, warmer weather tends to increase geologic activity, which could lead to volcanic eruptions, which could produce nuclear winter. And on and on and on... there are at probably a dozen totally catastrophic events that could occur, and we could trigger all or none of them. We really don't know. What we do know, is that it would be better not to find out.

Whether the result will be roasting or freezing may be in doubt, but there is certainly world pollution and it is not helping. At the moment, about 20 percent of the world's population creates about 80 percent of the waste. When the 80 percent finally industrialize, we are in deep shit, both figuratively and literally. Perhaps it is time we stopped arguing about cause & effect, and started cleaning up our planet.

-- WulfsDen (WulfsDen@yahoo.com), February 20, 2001.

Give a Hoot!
Don't Polute
&space;Woodsy Owl

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), February 20, 2001.

Meteorologists can't even predict the weather in 2 hours accurately. Choose any two and you'll get two different forecasts.

Why should I believe an international group of "scientists" with a political agenda? Not to mention that this is not a new report. It's the 3rd release of the same damn report.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), February 21, 2001.

Feb. 21, 12:14 EDT Chilling inaction on global warming Richard Gwyn HOME AND AWAY ONCE THE PILE of snow in your backyard begins to melt, it melts ever faster as the exposed patches of earth or stone reflect the sun's heat onto the receding pile.

The Earth behaves in the same way. Global warming generates its own self-reinforcing cycle of warming.

Once scientists anticipated that the globe would warm up by about 4 degrees C over the next century. In its latest report, published this week, the United Nations Panel on Climate Change reckons the globe may heat up by as much as 6 degrees C over the same time frame.

Probably the most chilling - if that's the right word - evidence of what's happening comes from drilling done in the Vostok ice core in Antarctica: Temperatures there are not only the highest ever - by far - but have never risen by as much as quickly in 400,000 years.

Evidence that's easier to relate to than deep down ice samples is now cropping up all over the place. Last summer, a stretch of open water was discovered at the North Pole. The ice cap on Africa's famous Mount Kilimanjaro is retreating so rapidly that it may disappear entirely in less than 15 years. Pacific salmon are turning up in Arctic waters.

The scale of the impending temperature increase isn't certain. Computer models, while impressive, are still iffy: The climatic variables are almost infinite and their interactions are complex.

Even after allowing for some important question marks - while the Earth's surface is warmer, the temperature of the lower troposphere (the atmosphere up to eight kilometres) hasn't changed - there is no doubt now that the globe is warming up.

Nor can any doubts remain that humans have caused the greater part of the problem and are continuing to do so.

Nor do any doubts remain about the principal consequences of global warming of this magnitude. More and more severe weather, such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves. A rise in sea levels, with disastrous consequences for poor, low-lying countries like Bangladesh. Acute water shortages in the Mediterranean and equivalent regions on both sides of the equator with the lush Amazon Basin turning into a parched savannah.

But between analysis and action, there is a complete disconnect. There is silence. There is timidity. There is an impregnable absence of will and of imagination.

The U.N.'s environmental conference in the Hague last November, called in an attempt to get an agreed action plan on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, ended in complete failure. A group of naysayers, led by the U.S. and including Canada, Australia, Japan, succeeded in preventing any agreement being reached to implement the modest emission reduction targets (a 5 per cent cut from 1990 levels, to be achieved by 2010) agreed to at the U.N.'s 1997 conference in Kyoto, Japan. Indeed, most of the political attention is now being given to how not to cut emissions - by substituting carbon dioxide ``sinks,'' such as expanded forests, which will absorb carbon dioxide but will also quicken warming by their dark leaves.

It makes a major difference that none of today's decision makers, from George W. Bush to Jean Chr*tien, will be around to shoulder the blame. It's critical, also, that developed countries, like Canada, will have to bear the principal cost of Kyoto-type remedial measures and, at the same time, by sheer geographic luck, will be affected adversely only tangentially. Indeed, in some respects global warming will benefit Canada - with a longer northern growing season, for example.

The root problem is a more fundamental one. Action can only be taken by government, including by requiring industries to meet agreed targets. Moreover, this action has to be taken collectively, on a global scale.

Governments, though, have lost their nerve. For more than a decade, government itself has been trashed and ridiculed by the neo- conservatives. Today, few governments - Bush's is a prime example - aspire to do much more than make their country - and the world, to the extent they can - safe for their corporations. Our only collective regulatory instrument left is the marketplace. Or everyone looking after their own, immediate, needs.

The scale of the global warming problem is so vast that it can only be tackled by institutions that believe in themselves and that can persuade their public to believe in their actions. Our governments now are too hollowed out to do that.

So not until the seas rise and the Earth starts to crack will we actually do anything. Unless we regain our sense of ourselves as a collectivity, all we will do before the crisis hits will be to sigh with regret as Mount Kilimanjaro turns into a dusty brown hill - and then switch to another TV channel.

Richard Gwyn's column appears Wednesday and Sunday in The Star. He can be reached at gwynR@sympatico.ca

http://www.thestar.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer? GXHC_gx_session_id_FutureTenseContentServer=4178233ecd4fbf28&pagename= thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=982687157721

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 21, 2001.

I believe that some people are a little mixed up about Meteorology and Climatolgy.

Meteorologists are concerned about changes in atmospheric phenomena.

Climatologists are concerned about conditions over a long period of time.

There is a big difference.

Source is me

Meteorologist for 38 years

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 21, 2001.

I'm not confused about the difference. I'm just not convinced that the IPCC has objective scientists writing these reports.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), February 22, 2001.

Sounds like the y2k debate, eh? Which "experts" do you believe?

Ottawa Citizen

"U of T researchers say non-uniform rise in oceans means ice caps are melting"

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 22, 2001.

A debate on GICC? Never happen.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 23, 2001.

Here is a conundrum for you. Satellite data shows only normal variation in atmospheric temperatures but the ground reporting stations are reporting increases.

-- Phil Maley (maley@cnw.com), February 24, 2001.

Feb. 26, 2001, 2:40PM

Global-warming reports put hot issue on front burner for Bush By BILL DAWSON Copyright 2001 Houston ChronicleEnvironment Writer

In his first few weeks in office, President Bush has been confronted with two disturbing new reports on global warming.

The U.N.-sponsored reports were based on recent research by hundreds of scientists. The first, issued in January, outlined growing evidence that human activities are indeed heating up the atmosphere. Last week, the second report projected a 21st-century world racked by more droughts, floods, storms, insect-borne diseases and other side effects of the warming trend.

Introducing a note of urgency at the new administration's first Cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill distributed copies of a speech he had given in 1998, in which he warned that delaying action to stem global warming by only a few years could pose "real danger to civilization."

Bush, a one-time Texas oil man, was openly skeptical just a couple of years ago that the use of oil and other fossil fuels was tipping Earth's complex climate system in a undesirable direction.

Now, with environmentalists and American allies like Britain turning up the political heat by citing the U.N. reports, the new administration must decide soon how to deal with the issue.

Early next month in Italy, climate change will be one of three items on the agenda at a meeting of environment ministers from the so- called Group of Eight -- seven Western industrialized nations plus Russia. Christie Whitman, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency chief, will attend.

In July in Italy, Bush will confer with other heads of state at a G-8 summit, where the climate issue is also sure to be discussed.

Global warming will be the sole subject at yet another international session in June or July -- the date isn't set -- where diplomats will resume negotiations on whether and how to complete the 1997 Kyoto treaty, a preliminary version of which was signed by former President Clinton.

In his campaign, Bush strongly opposed the Kyoto agreement, saying it would severely damage the American economy. It would require the U.S. and other heavily industrialized nations to make substantial, specified cuts in their emissions of carbon dioxide (released whenever fossil fuels are burned) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Since Bush took office last month, however, the new administration has not spelled out the policy he will substitute for Clinton's endorsement of the Kyoto approach. Last week, officials at several federal agencies would say only that the matter is under review.

Stalled negotiations on the Kyoto accord were scheduled to resume in May but were postponed when Secretary of State Colin Powell said the new administration needed more time to formulate its position.

"The Europeans (who support the treaty) wouldn't have agreed to a postponement unless they had some assurance that the U.S. would have its negotiating act together" when the talks resume, said Alden Meyer, director of government relations for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that monitors the climate talks.

Global warming is a forbiddingly complex issue, mixing science, economics, politics and diplomacy. The basic initial question facing the new administration is whether to seek changes in the Kyoto treaty or try an altogether new route.

Influential industry groups, as well as conservative leaders in the Republican Party, want Bush to let the treaty die without trying to try to correct what he sees as its flaws.

Rep. Joe Barton, a Republican from Ennis who is the new chairman of the House energy subcommittee, recently urged the president to send the agreement to the Senate for ratification -- something the Clinton administration never did -- where it would meet certain rejection.

But Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, perhaps the leading Republican critic of the treaty, does not favor killing it now. An aide said last week that Hagel and other Kyoto opponents in the Senate "are looking for ways to move forward on the issue."

If Bush continues U.S. participation in the Kyoto talks, U.S. representatives will face newly energized European diplomats, said Glenn Kelly, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition. The coalition represents major trade associations for the oil, coal, utility and other industries and opposes any internationally mandated cuts in greenhouse gases.

Kelly said that Jan Pronk, the Netherlands' environment minister and president of the climate talks, told him this month that European leaders are under "tremendous pressure" from their citizens "to get back to the negotiating table and take up where (negotiators) left off in November." The Europeans and other Kyoto proponents had hoped to complete work on the treaty at that session in The Hague.

Even leaders of Washington-based groups that follow the issue most closely say there is widespread uncertainty about the specific negotiating positions the administration may adopt.

Jonathan Lash, president of World Resources Institute, a prominent research center, served on an EPA Transition Advisory Team that helped prepare Whitman for her new job as chief of the agency.

"My guess -- and I have no inside information -- is that they have no idea yet," said Lash, who argues that the new U.N. reports present the U.S. with a "historic opportunity and a moral responsbility" to jump-start the Kyoto talks.

"I don't think (the issue) is high on their priority list, and they've had no high-level review," Lash said. "There was nothing in the campaign showing they had a clear policy."

Shortly before announcing his race for the presidency in 1999, Bush edged away from his previous skepticism about human-caused climate change, declaring with little elaboration that "I believe there is global warming."

During his campaign, Bush outlined his position on the issue for Resources for the Future, a centrist think tank. Its board includes Ken Lay, chairman of Houston-based Enron, a leading natural-gas company, who is a close friend of the new president.

In Bush's statement, he opposed any policies, such as the Kyoto treaty, which "would drastically increase the cost of gasoline, home heating oil, natural gas and electricity."

Bush also said his key climate-related policies would include "market- based mechanisms," such as international trading in pollution credits; more use of natural gas, which releases less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels; and a permanent tax credit to encourage U.S. businesses to develop cleaner energy technologies.

Emphasis on technology, instead of emission-cutting mandates, is a key theme of anti-Kyoto groups such as the Global Climate Coalition, which has long been viewed as reflecting the views of major oil companies such as Exxon Mobil.

Paul Portney, president of Resources for the Future, said he does not expect any of the high-ranking administration officials who came from the oil industry to take the lead on global warming.

Portney said he believes O'Neill -- the former chief executive officer of Alcoa who was known as a leading corporate advocate for taking the issue seriously -- will emerge in that role.

His decision to bring copies of his 1998 speech to the first Cabinet meeting -- which was devoted to Bush's drive to develop new energy sources -- was an early signal that this may happen.

O'Neill is not yet talking about specific policy ideas with his new Cabinet colleagues, but in providing copies of the speech, he was "urging them to learn about the issue, the sources and effects of the problem," a high-ranking Treasury Department official said last week.

http://www.newsdirectory.com/go/?r=tx&u=www.chron.com

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 26, 2001.