Posted on 09/27/2006 10:59:20 AM PDT by blam
'One degree and we're done for'
27 September 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Fred Pearce
Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know."
So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2 °C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback.
Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288).
The analysis reinforces a series of recent findings on accelerating environmental disruption in Siberia, northern Canada and Alaska, underlining a growing scientific consensus that these regions are pivotal to climate change. Earlier this month, NASA scientists reported that climate change was speeding up the melting of Arctic sea ice. Permanent sea ice has contracted by 14 per cent in the past two years (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 33, L17501). However, warming and melting have been just as dramatic on land in the far north.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
hahahah, ONE DEGREE and we are done for?? Better stop with the hot air then, you blathering faux-scientists. Better shut down the Senate, too. Stopping Teddy alone could help a LOT.
and Algore is the Stalin..
Earthquakes, volcanoes
Cats and Dogs living together
MASS HYSTERIA ....
"and Algore is the Stalin."
lol! Indeed!
The temperature changes by more than one degree every hour in most places on the planet. If anti-business political groups weren't paying scientists lots of money to take all these temperature measurements and extrapolate them into a model that gives the output that is desired politically, who would even notice an average increase of a degree?
Hey! I signed up in 1998. I demand that it be my fault too!
Why, just this morning I was watching my local weather guy. He put up the numbers...
High 73 Low 49
Record High 72 in 7994 bc
Well, we are near the top temperatures of an interglacial period, according to the Antarctic ice core studies. Which means that very soon, relatively speaking, the problem will likely be plummeting temperatures as Earth goes into another glacial period. Bad news, that, for Northern Europe in particular.
I really like that analogy. It works on many levels.
Speaking of Russians, a person that never comes up in the media with respect to the global warming issue is Mikhail Gorbachev, his Gorbachev Institute, The Gorbachev Foundation of North America, Green Cross International, or Global Green USA.
These organizations are all active in promoting sustainable this-and-that, green ecology, and global warming issues yet appear to work behind the scenes.
Hmmmm. I would speculate this guy enjoys more than six degrees of separation from sanity...
This article is more junk science from a supposedly reputable source. Whenever I see a "scientific" article about global warming, I think "agenda-driven."
Don't we also need the obligatory pirate chart?
Jim Hansen? I thought he was dead?
shhh...we'll get banned. ;-)
That one degree is in the new measure of 'Celtigrade.' In Celtigrade you're scrood no matter what. Unless, of course, you are Celt.
LOL...Good point. I love San Diego.
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