| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
24 Mar 2006 07:50:52 AM |
| Object: |
Ice caps melting faster than forecast |
From The Toronto Star, 3/24/06:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1143154016386&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
Ice caps melting faster than forecast
`It's not a gradual change. It's like flipping a switch,' researcher
says
New reports warn of sea levels rising up to 5 metres, extensive
flooding
PETER CALAMAI
SCIENCE REPORTER
Global warming of only a couple of degrees Celsius projected by the
end of this century is enough to trigger widespread melting of the
massive Greenland ice cap and the partial collapse of Antarctica's ice
sheets, prominent climate researchers warn in two studies published
yesterday.
The findings are a stunning about-face from previous expert forecasts
that such massive melting would take millennia to kick in, even with
rising global atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases.
This new research, based on a comprehensive look at global warming in
the distant past, says melting the two icy domains could eventually
raise sea level worldwide by as much as five metres, enough to flood
low-lying regions like the Netherlands and most Pacific atolls, as
well push half a billion people inland.
The full five-metre rise could take several centuries but the world's
oceans could easily be a metre higher by 2100, the researchers said.
"The melting is going to happen faster than we thought. It's already
begun to happen," said University of Calgary ice researcher Shawn
Marshall, the sole Canadian among the authors of the two studies
published by the journal Science.
"We could be past the point of no return for Greenland this century,"
he said in an interview.
A 1998 federal government report rated most of P.E.I., the eastern
coast of Nova Scotia and the Beaufort Sea shore in the Western Arctic
as "highly sensitive" to a global sea level rise of under seven-tenths
of a metre.
Marshall and the other researchers acknowledged they were taken by
surprise by the breakneck escalation in the melting of glaciers and
ice sheets in recent years.
Since 1980 the portion of the Greenland ice cap experiencing annual
melting has increased by 40 per cent.
"It's not a gradual change. It's like flipping a switch. Areas that
haven't experienced melt in centuries suddenly do," said Marshall.
A widely quoted report in 2001 from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change concluded that major melting was no threat in Greenland
and Antarctica in this century.
But Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of
Arizona, said the new research shows these massive ice sheets are much
more sensitive to global warming than originally suspected.
"Once we're above two times the pre-industrial levels of carbon
dioxide we're in the danger zone," said Overpeck, who is lead author
on one of the studies.
"Somewhere after that we'll pass a threshold where melting of the ice
sheets and sea level rise is irreversible," he said.
Most experts agree that carbon dioxide concentrations double the
pre-industrial level will be reached sometime after 2050 unless global
emissions are at least cut in half.
______________________________________________________
The beginning of the Christian Rapture -- brought to you by George
Bush and his horde of crazed evangelicals who welcome global warming.
Harry
.
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| User: "Mikhail S. Gorbachev" |
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| Title: Re: Ice caps melting faster than forecast |
24 Mar 2006 09:37:08 AM |
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"Harry Hope" <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:5au7221bftqc6vpbk40702db4mtea6ephu@4ax.com...
From The Toronto Star, 3/24/06:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1143154016386&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
Ice caps melting faster than forecast
No, they are not, My President Bush said it is just climate change and
nothing to worry about. And if My President said it, then it is true, he
would not lie to the American people. After all he is a man of God.
.
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| User: "Bill Bradley" |
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| Title: Re: Ice caps melting faster than forecast |
24 Mar 2006 02:49:39 PM |
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On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:37:08 -0600, "Mikhail S. Gorbachev"
<UnionofSoviet@SocialistRepublics.com> wrote:
No, they are not, My President Bush said it is just climate change and
nothing to worry about. And if My President said it, then it is true, he
would not lie to the American people. After all he is a man of God.
Da!
.
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