Experts slam upcoming global warming report
Later this week in Paris, climate
scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns
of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that
may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of
their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee
smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last
report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers.
Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic,
melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't
take into account the gorillas -- Greenland and Antarctica,"
said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie
Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant
surprises as we move into the 21st century."
CNN
Climate Resets 'Doomsday Clock'
January 17, 2007
Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added
climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the
greatest threats to humankind. As a result, the group has
moved the minute hand on its famous "Doomsday Clock" two minutes
closer to midnight.
BBC
Global Warming Creates New Island Found Off Greenland
January 16, 2007
All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not
simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of
coastlines. Nunataks - “lonely mountains” in Inuit - that were
encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed
of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a
new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the
landscape. “We are already in a new era of geography,”
said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. “This phenomenon - of an
island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice
melting around it - is a real common phenomenon now.” In
August, Steger discovered his own new island off the coast of
the Norwegian island of Svalbard, high in the polar basin.
Glaciers that had surrounded it when his ship passed through
only two years earlier were gone this year, leaving only a small
island alone in the open ocean.
Free Internet Press
Evangelicals, Scientists Join Forces to Combat Global Warming
January 15, 2007
Leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders have agreed
to put aside passionate differences over the origin of life and
work together to curb alarming levels of global warming that
threaten the survival of life on Earth. Representatives
met recently in Georgia and agreed on the need for urgent action
to drive down growing environmental degradation. Details on the
talks will be unveiled in Washington on Wednesday, according to
a joint statement.
USA Today
