Entry 118

Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.
AL GORE

Speech at National Sierra Club Convention

Sept. 9, 2005

Last year was the warmest recorded on Earth's surface, and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday. All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a statement. "It's fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern meteorological records," said Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New York City. "Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it's even fair to say that it's the warmest in the last several thousand years."
Deborah Zabarenko

Reuters UK, 24 Jan 06

Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence... Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and -- now -- Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

29 May 06

The advent of changes in global climate signals that we are now living beyond the Earth's capacity to absorb a major waste product.
Anthony McMichael

Australian National University, Canberra

9 Feb 06

Rising ocean temperatures linked by some studies to tropical storms are very likely a result of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research. The lead author of the new study, Benjamin D. Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the Energy Department, said the findings suggested that further warming would probably make hurricanes stronger in coming decades… The researchers compared a century of observed temperature changes with those produced in more than 80 computer simulations of how oceans respond to natural and human influences on the climate. The simulations were generated on 22 different computer models at 15 different research centers. The simulations correctly mimicked the cooling caused by plumes from volcanic eruptions, which temporarily block the sun. At the same time, the authors said, the only warming influence that could explain the changes in the oceans was the buildup of heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases in the air.
Andrew C. Revkin

Study Links Tropical Ocean Warming to Greenhouse Gases

The New York Times, 12 Sep 06