Fabulous
Guest
DROUGHTS will be longer, flooding rains will be rarer but heavier. Cyclones will hit harder. Violent storms and extreme heatwaves will strike more frequently. Evaporation will suck up scarce inland water. Sea levels will creep up half a metre. Oceans will be so acidic that in some places shells and reefs will dissolve.
And humanity, not nature, will be to blame.
This is the assessment of the state of the planet according to what is possibly the most reviewed document in history.
Containing contributions from 2500 scientists, citing 6000 reports and reviewed by 750 experts operating under a United Nations banner, the first part of the report will be released on Friday after line-by-line consensus is reached on its conclusions.
The most important paragraph in the 1200-page report is the strength of the scientific statement on the question that has most inflamed climate change sceptics what is driving global warming according to internationally recognised climate expert Dr Graeme Pearman, a former CSIRO chief of atmospheric research.
"It makes a much stronger statement about unequivocal evidence of air and ocean temperature rises, of the melting of snow and ice and the raising of sea levels, and that the effect is from human activities," he said. The report says the human influence on climate is at least five times that of any natural variation of the sun.
"Everyone realises that climate has varied in the geological past for a number of reasons, and one of them is that the output of the sun is not constant," Dr Pearman said. "But this report looks seriously at the evidence for that being the cause of this current warming, and is quite strong that if there is a solar influence, it is only a small part."
Dr Pearman has just completed his own review of the draft fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report largely confirms findings outlined in the third assessment, in 2001, but improvements in the science have produced a more authoritative, and frequently bleaker, document to guide policymakers around the world.
The last report built projections mainly on the basis of two climate models; this paper cites results from 21 models. They allow new insight into processes such as how the carbon cycle and climate change interact.
"When you release carbon dioxide, how does it get cycled into the atmosphere, the oceans, and the living plants and animals of the earth? One of the unanimous agreements in this is that the efficiency with which the earth can take up carbon dioxide is likely to decrease in coming decades.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/were-ruining-earth-scientists/2007/01/26/1169788693774.html
Food for thought for those with "their head in the sand". (Read Global Warming thread)
And humanity, not nature, will be to blame.
This is the assessment of the state of the planet according to what is possibly the most reviewed document in history.
Containing contributions from 2500 scientists, citing 6000 reports and reviewed by 750 experts operating under a United Nations banner, the first part of the report will be released on Friday after line-by-line consensus is reached on its conclusions.
The most important paragraph in the 1200-page report is the strength of the scientific statement on the question that has most inflamed climate change sceptics what is driving global warming according to internationally recognised climate expert Dr Graeme Pearman, a former CSIRO chief of atmospheric research.
"It makes a much stronger statement about unequivocal evidence of air and ocean temperature rises, of the melting of snow and ice and the raising of sea levels, and that the effect is from human activities," he said. The report says the human influence on climate is at least five times that of any natural variation of the sun.
"Everyone realises that climate has varied in the geological past for a number of reasons, and one of them is that the output of the sun is not constant," Dr Pearman said. "But this report looks seriously at the evidence for that being the cause of this current warming, and is quite strong that if there is a solar influence, it is only a small part."
Dr Pearman has just completed his own review of the draft fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report largely confirms findings outlined in the third assessment, in 2001, but improvements in the science have produced a more authoritative, and frequently bleaker, document to guide policymakers around the world.
The last report built projections mainly on the basis of two climate models; this paper cites results from 21 models. They allow new insight into processes such as how the carbon cycle and climate change interact.
"When you release carbon dioxide, how does it get cycled into the atmosphere, the oceans, and the living plants and animals of the earth? One of the unanimous agreements in this is that the efficiency with which the earth can take up carbon dioxide is likely to decrease in coming decades.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/were-ruining-earth-scientists/2007/01/26/1169788693774.html
Food for thought for those with "their head in the sand". (Read Global Warming thread)