Associated Press:
A long-awaited report by an international scientific network will offer much stronger evidence of how man is changing Earth's climate, and should prompt balky governments into action against global warming, the group's chief scientist said Monday.
See what I mean? They have met the anti-science residents of Lala-Land that make up the Bush administration, apparently. Anyhoo...
The upcoming, multi-volume U.N. assessment -- on melting ice caps and rising seas, with authoritative new data on how the world has warmed -- "might provide just the right impetus to get the negotiations going in a more purposeful way," Rajendra K. Pachauri said in an interview midway through the annual two-week U.N. climate conference.
The Indian climatologist is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global network of some 2,000 climate and other scientists that regularly assesses the state of research into how carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced by industry and other human activities are affecting the climate.
The findings aren't public yet, but they're expected to include:
-World temperatures have risen to levels not seen in at least 12,000 years, propelled by rapid warming the past 30 years.
-Greenland's ice mass has been melting at what NASA calls a "dramatic" rate of 170 cubic kilometers (41 cubic miles) per year, far surpassing the gain of 58 cubic kilometers (14 cubic miles) per year from snowfall.
-The levels of oceans, expanding from warmth and from land-ice runoff, have risen at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year between 1961 and 2003, and by more than 3 millimeters a year in 1993-2003.
A dem congress couldn't have come too soon. Barbara Boxer replaces the flat-earther James Inhofe on the Senate panel on environment and public works, for example.
Hope dawns...
Tags: news politics international global warming environment Kenya UN
