If the voices of future generations could be heard, they would plead for action on climate change. The unborn
children of tomorrow will bear the heavy burden of our indifference. (anon)
Graph of Historical Trend of Warming Temperatures
Carbon
Dioxide Increasing in Atmosphere
Methane Also Increasing
More Frequent Extreme Weather
Disappearing Glaciers
Melting Arctic Sea Ice
Melting Antarctic Sea Ice
Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting
Tropical Diseases
Spreading
Oceans Warming With Coral Bleaching & Disintegration
This graph below shows the record of global average temperatures
as compiled by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research of the UK Meteorological Office.
Carbon Dioxide Increasing
in Atmosphere
The atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, have increased
since pre-industrial times from 280 part per million (ppm) to 377.5 ppm (2004 Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center),
a 34% increase. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are the highest in 650,000 years. Carbon dioxide is a by-product
of the burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline in an automobile or coal in a power plant generating electricity.
Methane
Also Increasing
Levels of atmospheric methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, have risen 145%
in the last 100 years. [18] Methane is derived from sources such as rice paddies, bovine flatulence, bacteria
in bogs and fossil fuel production. Back to Top of Page
More
Frequent Extreme Weather
The year 1999 was the fifth-warmest year on record since the mid-1800's;
1998 being the warmest year. According to Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center (NOAA), the current pace
of temperature rise is "consistent with a rate of 5.4 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit per century." By comparison, the
world has warmed by 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit since the depths of the last ice age, 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.
The
potential for floods and droughts is increasing."....... the heating from increased greenhouse gases enhances the hydrological
cycle and increases the risk for stronger, longer-lasting or more intense droughts, and heavier rainfall events and flooding,
even if these phenomena occur for natural reasons. Evidence, although circumstantial, is widespread across the United States.
Examples include the intense drought in the central southern U.S in 1996, Midwest flooding in spring of 1995 and extensive
flooding throughout the Mississippi Basin in 1993 even as drought occurred in the Carolinas, extreme flood events in winters
of 1992-93 and 1994-95 in California but droughts in other years (e.g, 1986-87 and 1987-88 winters)," says Dr. Kevin
Trenberth of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [6] Back to Top of Page
Disappearing
Glaciers Ice is melting all over the planet. Glaciers are melting on six continents.
If
present warming trends continue, all glaciers in Glacier National Park could be gone by 2030. [54] The park's Grinnell
Glacier is already 90% gone. Pictured here is the glacier prior to its meltdown. [120]
Because
of global warming, the glaciers of the Ruwenzori range in Uganda are in massive retreat.
The
Bering Glacier, North America's largest glacier, has lost 7 miles of its length, while losing 20-25% of parts of the glacier.
Ice cores taken from the Dunde Ice Cap in the Qilian Mountains
on the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau indicate that the years since 1938 have been the warmest in the
last 12,000 years.
The melting is accelerating. The Lewis Glacier on Mt. Kenya (In Kenya) has lost 40% of its mass during
the period 1963-1987 or at a much faster clip than during 1899-1963. [29]
See Gary Braasch's Pictures of Receding
Glaciers
See More Images of Receding Glaciers
Ohio State University researcher Lonnie
Thompson on global warming and retreating glaciers
In southern Peru the rate of melting
of the Qori Kalis glacier during the 8 year period 1983 to 1991 was 3 times the pace of the previous 20 years, 1963 to 1983.
"By the time we probably know what they are doing, it will be far too late to worry about it because they are going to
be like galloping glaciers," says Ellen Mosley Thompson, climate expert at Ohio State University. [30] The Qori Kalis
is receding at about two feet per day. Sitting beside the glacier, one could witness the melting hour by hour. [120]
In
a study that appeared in the journal, Science, September 15, 2000, a team led by Lonnie G. Thompson, including Ellen Mosley-Thompson,
both of Ohio State, analyzed ice cores that came from deep within a glacier more than 20,000 feet high in the Himalayas. The
results of their research showed that the past 100 years have been the hottest period in 1,000 years high in the Himalayas.
Also their research supports other studies that demonstrated a dramatic decline in water levels of glacier-fed rivers, and
that the high elevations are warming much more than the global average (one degree F). Mosley-Thompson says, "For these
rivers to continue to flow year-round, they have to be fed by ice in the high mountains. The question then is where will the
river flow come from during the dry season?" [59]
Greenland's glaciers are moving more rapidly to the sea,
caused, perhaps, by melt water lubricating the base of the glaciers. See below for another look at dwindling ice mass in Greenland.
The Tasman Glacier in New Zealand has thinned by more than 100 meters in the past century. Glaciers
in New Zealand have shrunk about 26% between 1890 and 1998. [54]
The melting of the Gangotri Glacier in
India is accelerating with an average rate of retreat of 30 meters annually. The rate between 1935 and 1990 was 18 meters
per year and 7 meters annually between 1842 and 1935. [54]
A glacier from which Sir Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay set out to conquer Mount Everest nearly 50 years ago has retreated three miles up the mountain due to global
warming. The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Tashi Jangbu Sherpa, says " that Hillary and Tenzing would
now have to walk two hours to find the edge of the glacier which was close to their original base camp." [114]
Portage Glacier in the Chugach National Forest, south of Anchorage, is another casualty of climate
change, say scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. These researchers found that melting glaciers are responsible
for at least 9 percent of the global sea-level rise over the past century.
Melting Arctic
Sea Ice
The Arctic, with an area about the size of the United States, is seeing average
temperatures similar to the Antarctic, almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the planet as a whole Arctic sea ice has shrunk by 250 million acres -- an area the size of California, Maryland and Texas
combined.
In a N.Y Times article (Nov. 17, 1999) it was reported that scientists have discovered that from 1993
through 1997 average Arctic sea ice thickness was six feet. This represents a significant reduction in Arctic sea ice from
1958 through 1976 when average thickness measured 10 feet. This means that in less than 30 years, there has been a 40% loss
of arctic sea ice. In a Washington Post article (Dec. 3, 1999) it was noted that in the Arctic, sea ice
is shrinking at a rate of 14,000 square miles annually, an area larger than Maryland and Delaware combined.
According
to a report by Norwegian scientists, the arctic sea ice in about 50 years could disappear entirely each summer. Researchers
at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center based their predictions on satellite pictures. These pictures showed
that the Arctic winter icescapes decreased by 6% (a Texas-size area) during the last 20 years. [61]
Back to Top of Page
Melting Antarctic Sea Ice
The Antarctic Peninsula
has seen an increase in average temperatures of almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 50 years. Heavy sea ice has been the
norm in the Antarctic, but in the 1990's sea ice disintegration has begun, notes Robin Ross, a biological oceanographer
with the University of California at Santa Barbara. During the year 1998, the Antarctic displayed a record low in winter sea
ice.
Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting
In a recent study
by researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shows that Greenland's ice sheet, about 8% of the Earth's
grounded ice (Antarctica possessing 91% of land ice), is losing ice mass. A NASA high-tech aerial survey shows that more than
11 cubic miles of ice is melting along Greenland's coasts yearly, accounting for 7% of the annual global sea level rise.
Measurements over the last century suggest that sea level has risen 9 inches, enough to cause flooding in low-lying areas,
when a storm occurs. Sea level increase could worsen, if the present trend continues, says William Krabill, lead author of
the NASA study. [53]
Tropical Diseases Spreading
A
recent study by New Zealand doctors, researchers at the Wellington School of Medicine's public health department said
outbreaks o f dengue fever in South Pacific islands are directly related to global warming. [9] Global warming is projected
to significantly increase the range conducive to the transmission of both dengue and yellow fevers. [10]
Oceans
Warming With Coral Bleaching & Disintegration
Devastating loss of coral in the Caribbean
- March, 2006
In March, 2006 researchers discovered devastating loss of coral in the Caribbean off Puerto Rico and
the Virgin Islands. "It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller,
who last week checked 40 official monitoring stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're seeing now
is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef ... We're
talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months."...............Miller
noted that some of the devastated coral can never be replaced because it only grows the width of one dime each year.
If coral reefs die "you lose the goose with golden eggs"
that are key parts of small island economies, said Edwin Hernandez-Delgado, a University of Puerto Rico biology researcher.
While investigating the widespread loss of Caribbean coral, Hernandez-Delgado found a colony of 800-year-old star coral —
more than 13 feet high — that had just died in the waters off Puerto Rico.........."We did lose entire colonies,"
he said. "This is something we have never seen before."
"We
haven't seen an event of this magnitude in the Caribbean before," said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch.
Tom
Goreau of the Global Coral Reef Alliance says that compared to coral areas in the Indian and Pacific ocean, where warming
waters have brought about a 90% mortality rate, the Caribbean is healthier.
The Caribbean is actually better off than areas of the Indian and Pacific ocean where mortality rates —
mostly from warming waters — have been in the 90 percent range in past years, said Tom Goreau of the Global Coral Reef
Alliance. Goreau called what's happening worldwide "an underwater holocaust."
"The prognosis is not good," said biochemistry professor M. James Crabbe of the University
of Luton near London. "If you want to see a coral reef, go now, because they just won't survive in their current
state."
Read more in AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein's
article in the San Francisco Chronicle
A Doubling of Atmospheric CO2 will Stunt Coral Growth
The Earth is on a
trajectory to double its atmospheric carbon dioxide (above 700 ppm) by the year 2065. Scientists say that this will result
in a 30% drop in the amount of calcium that tropical oceans can retain, whereby coral growth would be stunted by the lack
of calcium in these ocean waters. [34] [87] This would threaten the capability of coral to repair itself in the event
of storm damage and from coral-chewing predators...............Robert W. Buddemeier, senior chemist with the Kansas Geological
Survey says, "There is growing agreement that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere means a 15% decline in the coral population."[116]
Ninth
International Coral Reef Symposium October 2000
In October, 2000 at the Ninth International
Coral Reef Symposium, held on the island of Bali, researchers warned that more than 25% of the world's coral reefs have
been destroyed by pollution and global warming. Scientists emphasized that most of the damage to coral is inflicted by global
warming through coral bleaching, the result of higher water temperatures heating the coral. The warming waters stress the
coral, which then expels the microscopic plants or algae that give the coral color and nourishes it. Most of the remaining
coral could be dead in 20 years, if global warming and pollution continue. Coral reefs around the Maldives and Seychelles
islands in the Indian Ocean have taken the brunt of warming seas, as 90% of these corals have been killed over the past two
years. Some of the coral reefs, long described as undersea rainforests, home to marine ecosystems that sustain thousands of
species of fish and other marine life, have been alive for up to 2.5 million years. [62]
At
the Ninth International Coral Reef Symposium, oceanographers said that the El Nino weather pattern two years ago, that led
to an increase in ocean water temperature by up to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, did heavy damage to coral reefs. Australian scientist
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg warns that in 20 years coral will be sitting in a "hot soup" and will not survive. Millions of
people depend on coral for income ($400 billion annually in fishing and tourism revenue) and food. [62]
World's Coral Reefs Will be Dead Within 50 Years
According
to Rupert Ormond, a marine biologist from Glasgow University, the world's coral reefs will be dead within 50 years because
of global warming, and there is nothing we can do to save them, a scientist warned on September 5, 2001. In a conference held
by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he said, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most coral
in most areas will be lost........We are looking at a loss which is equivalent to the tropical rain forests." He also
mentioned that if humans were to stop pumping out greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, tomorrow in a bid to halt the
process, it would still be too late to save the reefs. "I don't know what can be done, given that there's a 50-year
time lag between trying to limit carbon dioxide levels and any effect on ocean temperature............"We are looking
at a gradual running down of the whole system. Over time, the diversity of coral fish will die," Ormond said. He also
said that the only cause for optimism was that new coral reefs could start to emerge in colder waters such as the north Atlantic
Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Humankind will also suffer directly as the dead reefs are eroded and shorelines that have been
protected for the last 10,000 years are now vulnerable without their natural defenses.
Go directly to information source (September 6, 2001) or [104]
