Climate change may in fact
be irreversible?!
be irreversible?!
By the time Al Gore's award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" hit theaters in 2006, most of the world had accepted the fact of global warming
As factories, cars and power plants emit tons of gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides into the atmosphere, and all the while deforestation activities remove the plant life that absorbs carbon dioxide, lots of those "greenhouse gases" build up in the atmosphere. There, they act like the glass of a greenhouse, allowing sunlight in but trapping it once it's there.
Losses from glaciers, ice-sheets and the Polar Regions appear to be happening faster than anticipated, and melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet surface also seems to be accelerating.
A study published in 2009, led by a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that climate change may in fact be irreversible. Instead of it taking a couple hundred years to reverse global warming if we cut emissions right now, it looks like it could take more like a millennium.
According to the 2009 study, we could be looking at a thousand years of warmer temperatures even if we make dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions right now. So technically, it's not "irreversible" -- any of our descendants born after the year 3000 will be able to reap the benefits of our CO2 cuts (whew!).
The speed and scope of global warming is now overtaking even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.
“It’s important to stress it’s not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.” ~Dr Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts
"Climate change is happening. The evidence is all around us. And unless we act, we will see catastrophic consequences including rising sea-levels, droughts and famine, and the loss of up to a third of the world's plant and animal species"~UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Human activities are responsible
for most of the warming.
Human activities contribute to global warming
by enhancing Earth's natural greenhouse effect.
To download the full report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, visit: http://www.unep.org/compendium2009/
As factories, cars and power plants emit tons of gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides into the atmosphere, and all the while deforestation activities remove the plant life that absorbs carbon dioxide, lots of those "greenhouse gases" build up in the atmosphere. There, they act like the glass of a greenhouse, allowing sunlight in but trapping it once it's there.
Losses from glaciers, ice-sheets and the Polar Regions appear to be happening faster than anticipated, and melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet surface also seems to be accelerating.
A study published in 2009, led by a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that climate change may in fact be irreversible. Instead of it taking a couple hundred years to reverse global warming if we cut emissions right now, it looks like it could take more like a millennium.
According to the 2009 study, we could be looking at a thousand years of warmer temperatures even if we make dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions right now. So technically, it's not "irreversible" -- any of our descendants born after the year 3000 will be able to reap the benefits of our CO2 cuts (whew!).
The speed and scope of global warming is now overtaking even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.
“It’s important to stress it’s not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.” ~Dr Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts
"Climate change is happening. The evidence is all around us. And unless we act, we will see catastrophic consequences including rising sea-levels, droughts and famine, and the loss of up to a third of the world's plant and animal species"~UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Human activities are responsible for most of the warming.
Human activities contribute to global warming
by enhancing Earth's natural greenhouse effect.
To download the full report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, visit: http://www.unep.org/compendium2009/
Sources:
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2009/2009-09-25-02.asp
http://science.howstuffworks.com/global-warming-irreversible.htm/printable
http://climateprogress.org/2009/09/28/uk-met-office-catastrophic-climate-change-could-happen-with-50-years/ http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/09/joseph-romm-met-office-catastrophic.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2009/2009-09-25-02.asp
http://science.howstuffworks.com/global-warming-irreversible.htm/printable
http://climateprogress.org/2009/09/28/uk-met-office-catastrophic-climate-change-could-happen-with-50-years/ http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/09/joseph-romm-met-office-catastrophic.html
No comments:
Post a Comment