Global temperatures reach new records
A study from NASA shows that temperatures are now the highest they've been in 18 000 years.'The most important result found by these researchers is that the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius (1.8° F) of the maximum temperature of the past million years, which they suggest is a sensible upper limit for additional global warming. “If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today.”'
posted by ProfWW @ 1:00 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hi all,
I'm ashamed to say I haven't seen this movie yet.
However, I used to be skeptical about global warming studies. That's because the studies predicting CO2 enhanced warming were first done in the early 80's using very crude computer models. Also, confirming a climate trend takes about 20-30 years of carefully collected climate observations. We're now at a time where we are in fact confirming how good these predictions were ... what they show is that we seem to have UNDERESTIMATED the impacts of warming.
On the other hand, keep in mind that 14 000 years ago, Vermont was under a 2 or 3 mile slab of ice. The natural climate is very variable, and there are plenty of natural processes that would have a far greater impact on life on the planet than CO2 emissions. The difference of course is that we do have control over emissions.
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