U.N.: 150,000 deaths tied to warmer world 2000 estimate, and ‘hoax’ claim by U.S. senator, fuel treaty debate http://www.msnbc.com/news/1003942.asp?0sl=-21 MILAN, Italy, Dec. 11 — As negotiators on a global warming pact ran into new obstacles Thursday, a U.N. agency estimated that 150,000 deaths in 2000 were tied to warmer temperatures and that the toll could double in 30 years if current trends are not reversed. THE WORLD HEALTH Organization warning on warming-related deaths stood in stark contrast to statements by the most senior U.S. lawmaker on environmental policy, who was attending the negotiations over the Kyoto climate change pact. “Kyoto and its policies are inconsistent with freedom, prosperity and environmental policy progress,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. “I’m becoming more and more convinced, as time goes by and we look at the research, that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people and the world.” HEALTH WARNING Inhofe’s views are contrary to those of most climate scientists. In reports to the U.N. and in scientific papers, these scientists believe that while the exact impact humans have is debatable it is in any case significant and largely due to the burning of fossil fuels. The World Health Organization added its voice to the debate, issuing a report Thursday that estimates global warming led to 150,000 premature deaths in 2000. “We see an approximate doubling in deaths and in the burden in healthy life years lost” by 2030, said WHO scientist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum. He acknowledged those numbers were minuscule compared to the 56 million people who die each year, and noted that 10 times more people die each year from tobacco-linked illness. But, he added, “that doesn’t make it more acceptable and the fact is it’s likely to get worse. One of the points about climate change is that people who are affected by it don’t have the choice to stop smoking.” The agency also estimated warmer temperatures were to blame for 2.4 percent of cases of diarrhea worldwide, and two percent of all cases of malaria. Gradual warming in many cases can lead to increased rainfall, creating more places for stagnant water to build up. “Still water provides additional breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other vectors which transmit diseases such as malaria and dengue fever,” the agency said. Not all scientists were convinced by the study, especially by the link it draws between warming and malaria. “It is naive to predict the effects of ’global warming’ on malaria on the mere basis of temperature,” Paul Reiter, a professor at Paris’s Pasteur Institute, said in a statement. “Why don’t we devote our resources to tackling these diseases directly, instead of spending billions in vain attempts to change the weather?” But Kerstin Leitner, a WHO assistant director, said in a statement accompanying the report that “there is growing evidence that changes in the global climate will have profound effects on the health and well-being of citizens in countries throughout the world. “We must better understand the potential health effects particularly for those who are most vulnerable, so that we can better manage the risks,” Leitner added. OPEC OBSTACLE In Milan, where Kyoto negotiators are trying to work out details should the treaty ever go into effect, OPEC nations on Thursday made demands that complicated talks further. Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries argued that a planned fund for developing countries should also compensate oil exporters for losses if consumers shift away from fossil fuels towards clean energy like wind or solar power. Third world delegates disagreed. “OPEC doesn’t have problems when you compare with the threat that rising sea levels will wash away some Pacific island states,” one delegate from a Third World nation said. “Even most poor states disagree with them.” The Special Climate Change Fund is meant to help poor nations adapt to the impact of global warming, ranging from more frequent droughts, floods and typhoons. A group of nations led by the European Union has pledged $410 million a year as of 2005. Details of the fund are the final main negotiating point at the 180-nation conference that wraps up Friday After committees failed to agree on the fund, they asked the president of the talks, Hungarian Environment Minister Miklos Persanyi, to try to break the deadlock with ministers. If that doesn’t happen, the issue would be postponed for a year. Oil producers fear they could lose billions of dollars under Kyoto, which aims to reduce emissions of gases like carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels in cars and power plants. EYES ON RUSSIA Environmental groups, meanwhile, hosted a muted birthday party for the Kyoto protocol on Thursday, six years to the day after it was agreed in the Japanese city of that name. Kyoto has been weakened by a U.S. pullout and Russia is undecided on whether to ratify. The Bush administration sent a delegation to Milan to observe the talks. Environmentalists feared U.S. officials would try to undermine efforts to launch the pact. Without Russia, Kyoto will collapse. The protocol needs ratifications by nations accounting for 55 percent of emissions of carbon dioxide to enter into force. So far it has reached 44 percent and needs Russia’s 17 percent after the pullout of a U.S. stake of 36 percent. Russia says Kyoto might choke its economic growth even though the collapse of its smokestack Soviet-era industries leaves it with spare emissions quotas to trade abroad. Moscow may also want pledges of investments or membership of the World Trade Organization.
Sorry for the formatting. I love that the chairman for the Senate committee on the environment said: “Kyoto and its policies are inconsistent with freedom, prosperity and environmental policy progress,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. I’m becoming more and more convinced, as time goes by and we look at the research, that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people and the world.” I guess he doesn't remember Y2K. Then again, cleaning up global warming doesn't load billions into corporate coffers like Y2K did.
To be fair, they should also determine how many people died from the cold. There continues to be highly questionable 'evidence' that humans are contributing to global warming. If the entire argument is based on someone's 30-year or beyond projections, then it is flimsy at best. I question the judgment of anyone who chooses to make policy based on their *guesses* as to how humans contribute to the warming of the environment. I scoff at the notion that economic development should in any way be hindered by these very uncertain claims supported by extremely weak evidence. We are very certain how lower costs for consumers impacts us. We are certain how lower energy costs impact us. We are certain how jobs impact our economy. We are very uncertain as to what may or may not be causing the changes in climate. The climate was changing long before humans even came into existence. It will continue to change. To attempt to attribute these changes to human behavior is wildly speculative.
So, you are saying that the impact on our economy that would be created by enforcing clean air standards is more important than the 150,000 lives that were lost due to warmer temperatures? You're right, money trumps lives every day in America. He who has the gold makes the rules and the energy companies have the gold so they get to do what they want as long as we are under the Bush regime. I am not saying that Kyoto is necessarily the best way to combat the problem, but there was a record breaking heat wave in Eorope this year in which they saw temperatures higher than ever in recorded history. You can stick your head in the sand or bobble your head mindlessly to the conservative rhetoric if you want, but I would like to leave my son a world where he doesn't have to wear SPF 1000 to go play in the back yard.
i read an article yesterday that said that prehistoric man started global warming by clearing trees for farms...that would indicate that our very existence dooms the planet unless we return to hunting and foraging. tell ya what...i'll just throw out my sweaters and buy more shorts.
where are we getting this 150K number? i think that's hysterical. we just throw out a conclusory number like that and we're all supposed to accept it as gospel...it's based solely on conjecture. what if the temperature dropped the same amount it rised? would we have deaths related to that?? the global climate has never been stable...and the last big study i saw indicated we don't even begin to touch the temperatures reached in the middle ages. i think i'm skeptical because of the statements by those proposing huge change...particularly when those statements acknowledge the lack of definitive evidence before making those changes...there was a statement by a UN rep once (it may have been Kofi Annan, I can't remember)....that we needed to go forward with major policy changes before we have substantive evidence that we're actually causing any changes that may be happening in the climate.
just curious, but do you think it's possible this was caused by the US pulling out of Kyoto? -- Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest By SPACE.com posted: 03:00 pm ET 08 December 2003 Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It's also gathering data of a possible longer trend. There appears to be too much frozen water at low-latitude regions -- away from the frigid poles -- given the current climate of Mars. The situation is not in equilibrium, said William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Layered deposits covering older, cratered surfaces near Mars' south pole dominate this image taken last month. The margin of these layered deposits appears to be eroding poleward, exposing a series of layers in the retreating cliff. It is one piece of a puzzle scientists are putting together on an apparently changing Martian climate. "One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," Feldman said. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn't reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter." Frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top 3 feet (1 meter) of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said. Feldman is the lead scientist for an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions. He and other Odyssey scientists described their recent findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars," said Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. High latitude regions of Mars have layers with differing ice content within the top 20 inches (half-meter) or so of the surface, researchers conclude from mapping of hydrogen abundance based on gamma-ray emissions. "A model that fits the data has three layers near the surface," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, team leader for the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. "The very top layer would be dry, with no ice. The next layer would contain ice in the pore spaces between grains of soil. Beneath that would be a very ice-rich layer, 60 to nearly 100 percent water ice." Boynton interprets the iciest layer as a deposit of snow or frost, mixed with a little windblown dust, from an era when the climate was colder than nowadays. The middle layer could be the result of changes brought in a warmer era, when ice down to a certain depth dissipated into the atmosphere. The dust left behind collapsed into a soil layer with limited pore space for returning ice. More study is needed to determine for sure what's going on. Other Odyssey instruments are providing other pieces of the puzzle. Images from the orbiter's camera system have been combined into the highest resolution complete map ever made of Mars' south polar region. "We can now accurately count craters in the layered materials of the polar regions to get an idea how old they are," said Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the camera system. Temperature information from the camera system's infrared imaging has produced a surprise about dark patches that dot bright expanses of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice. "Those dark features look like places where the ice has gone away, but thermal infrared maps show that even the dark areas have temperatures so low they must be carbon-dioxide ice." Christensen said. "One possibility is that the ice is clear in these areas and we're seeing down through the ice to features underneath."
Again, I am not saying that major changes like Kyoto are necessary, but neither are the changes that Bush has put in place to allow big polluters to get around the Clean Air Act. Of course I cannot say conclusively that pollution is causing global warming (yet) but we do have some pretty convincing anecdotal evidence to support the hypothesis. I just think it might behoove us to clean up our industrial plants, and I further believe that there is much more reason for this than global warming. Just having clean air to breathe and water that is not full of toxins is enough reason for me to want to require those polluters to install already existing technology in their plants. The other thing that this story shows is that the republicans really don't give a rat's a$$ what the rest of the world thinks as long as their contributors get paid.
now, see..this i can definitely get behind. global warming takes it to a whole different place...but when you break it down like this, i can't argue. i agree entirely. i would like to see incentives put in place for car companies to roll out cleaner burning engines and for industry to reduce pollution, as well. give people an economic reason to do something, and it usually gets done.
Don't take the uncertainties inherent in the scientific process for uncertainty in the basic phenomena. Scientists cannot pin down exactly how much the temps will change, but that doesn't discredit the idea of climate change. Opponents sieze upon the basic uncertainties to try and discredit the whole. Couple this with a public that doesn't really understand the science or the implications and it's easy to lampoon the science as TJ has done here... see also the inevitable jokes about "What Global Warming?" whenever it snows somewhere. But every legitimate scientist studying climate change has reached the same conclusion: human activities are changing the climate. Show me a scientist who is a "skeptic" on this issue and I will show you a scientist who is on the payroll of energy companies and who abuses basic scientific conventions. If you are going to manipulate the findings to establish a popular mechanism for discrediting the overwhelming scientific concensus, then you are also thumbing your nose at the best way we have figured out to acquire knowledge, the scientific method. This can do nothing but hurt society in the long run. I think the analogy is tobacco... we're at a point in time where the scientific evidence for climate change is monumental, just as it was in the early 1960's when the medical community was sure that cigarettes caused cancer. It took over a decade for that message to filter into the general population because the tobacco companies fought it all the way with junk science and by trying to discredit legitimate findings by playing on the inherent uncetainties of science. Even today. it's possible to find people that claim cigarettes don't cause harm. We're at the same point with climate change. Here's a recent release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Given the Bush Administration's stance on climate change, I'm amazed something this strong got released. ___________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 2, 2003 “No Doubt” Human Activity Is Affecting Global Climate, Top Scientists Conclude Contact: Anatta UCAR Communications Telephone: (303) 497-8604 E-mail: anatta@ucar.edu Cheryl Dybas, NSF Telephone: 703-292-7734 E-mail: cdybas@nsf.gov BOULDER—Two of the nation’s premier atmospheric scientists, after reviewing extensive research by their colleagues, say there is no longer any doubt that human activities are having measurable—and increasing—impacts on global climate. Their study cites atmospheric observations and multiple computer models to paint a detailed picture of climate changes likely to buffet Earth in coming decades, including rising temperatures and an increase in extreme weather events, such as flooding and drought. The study appears December 5 in Science as part of the journal’s "State of the Planet" series. The coauthors—Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, and Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)—conclude that industrial emissions have been the dominant influence on climate change for the past 50 years, overwhelming natural forces. The most important of these emissions is carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps solar radiation and warms the planet. “There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing because of human activities, and today greenhouse gases are the largest human influence on global climate,” they write. “The likely result is more frequent heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, and related impacts, e.g., wildfires, heat stress, vegetation changes, and sea-level rise which will be regionally dependent.” The article cites research indicating that, between 1990 and 2100, there is a 90 percent probability that global temperatures will rise by 1.7 to 4.9 degrees Celsius (3.1 to 8.9 degrees Fahrenheit), because of human influences on climate. Such warming would have widespread impacts on society and the environment, including continued melting of glaciers and the great ice sheets of Greenland, inundating the world’s coasts. The authors base their estimate on computer model experiments by climate scientists, observations of atmospheric changes, and recorded climate changes over the past century. However, there is still large uncertainty in understanding the global climate and how it will change, says Karl. If temperatures rise 1.7 degrees, the expected changes would be relatively small, whereas a 4.9-degree increase could bring drastic impacts, some of which may be unforeseen. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen by 31 percent since preindustrial times, from 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to over 370 ppmv today. Other human activities, such as emissions of sulfate and soot particles and the development of urban areas, have significant but more localized climate impacts. Such activities may enhance or mask the larger-scale warming from greenhouse gases, but not offset it, according to the authors. If societies could successfully cut emissions and stabilize carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, temperatures would still increase by an estimated 0.5 degree C (0.9 degree F) over a period of decades, Karl and Trenberth warn. This is because greenhouse gases are slow to cycle out of the atmosphere. “Given what has happened to date and is projected in the future, significant further climate change is guaranteed,” the authors state. If current emissions continue, the world would face the fastest rate of climate change in at least the last 10,000 years. This could potentially alter ocean current circulations and radically change existing climate patterns. Moreover, certain natural processes would tend to accelerate the warming. For example, as snow cover melts away, the darker land and water surface would absorb more solar radiation, further increasing temperatures. Karl and Trenberth say more research is needed to pin down both the global and regional impacts of climate change. Scientists, for example, have yet to determine the temperature impacts of increased cloud cover or how changes in the atmosphere will influence El Niño, the periodic warming of Pacific Ocean waters that affects weather patterns throughout much of the world. The authors call for multiple computer model studies to address the complex aspects of weather and climate. The models must be able to integrate all components of Earth’s climate system—physical, chemical, and biological. This, in turn, will require considerable international cooperation and the establishment of a global climate monitoring system to collect and analyze data. Because of the broad range of potential change in temperature, it's extremely important to ensure that we have a comprehensive observing system to track unforeseen changes and variations, says Karl. “Climate change is truly a global issue, one that may prove to be humanity’s greatest challenge,” the authors conclude. “It is very unlikely to be adequately addressed without greatly improved international cooperation and action.”
As this argument by andymoon continues to spiral downward, I would like to point out that the terminology in the title should read "Premature deaths" not simply "deaths". They are not saying that 150,000 people just dropped dead from oppressive heat, they are trying to say that 150,000 people lost their lives a bit earlier than previously thought because of allegedly warmer temperatures. Look if the temperature rises by 2 or 3 degrees and this causes someone to die prematurely, then they were pretty darn close to death anyhow. Oh yippee, they could have lived another couple of days if that darn temperature on August 15 wasn't 100 instead of 98. Hooray. How speculative is all of this? The 150,000 number seems ridiculous. Trying to say someone died 'prematurely' is ridiculous and a very inexact science. Heck, trying to forecast a 'global average temperature' isn't even an exact science. What a joke this entire argument is -- what is insane is that people want to base actual policy on it. Ridiculous.
TJ, I would think as a money kind of guy, you would not let your politics blind you to the possibilities here. On one side you have the extraction industries and on the other side, you have insurance companies who are becoming increasingly worried about the losses they wil suffer. Seems like a wise man like yourself could find a way to make money for his investors over the long haul. ________________ Pension Funds Plan to Press Global Warming as an Issue The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2003 Officials controlling some of the nation's largest pension funds announced plans yesterday to press regulators, public companies and Wall Street to pay more heed to the potential financial upheaval from climate change. They said that their effort would be coordinated through a new group, the Investor Network on Climate Risk. "In global warming, we are facing an enormous risk to the U.S. economy and to retirement funds that Wall Street has so far chosen to ignore," said Philip Angelides, the treasurer of California. In addition to Mr. Angelides, the founders of the network include the New York State comptroller, Alan Hevesi; the New York City comptroller, William Thompson; and Denise Nappier, the treasurer of Connecticut. They were joined by counterparts from New Mexico, Oregon, Maine and Vermont as well as officials overseeing two major union pension funds. Their plans, which they termed a "call to action," were announced in conjunction with a meeting at the United Nations that brought together fund managers representing more than $1 trillion in assets and representatives from numerous Wall Street banks and investment advisers. The meeting was the most elaborate effort yet by a growing group of fund managers, shareholder advocates and environmentalists to persuade businesses to move more aggressively to identify and address problems they might face from global warming, increasingly frequent extreme weather and other climate changes that have been linked to the rapid buildup in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. The meeting was addressed by both Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, and the former vice president, Al Gore, who said, "This is not business as usual - the relationship between the human species and the planet on which we live has been utterly transformed." Investment managers who attended the meeting said they had no trouble agreeing that the challenge was a daunting one. But many fund managers were uncertain how the climate change projections reviewed at the start of the meeting could translate into investment strategy. One recounted his experience setting up a fund at the request of two clients in 1990 to invest in companies that were developing environmentally beneficial products or doing business in a more environmentally sound way than their peers. The clients asked him to shut the fund down just more than two years later when it failed to do as well as the rest of the stock market. Abby Joseph Cohen, managing director at Goldman Sachs, noted the public was not yet rewarding sensitivity to climate issues in the marketplace or at the polls. "Someone's obviously buying and driving those S.U.V.'s, and they are voting," she said. But others like Mr. Angelides argued that responsible pension fund managers had a legal responsibility to take a longer view. He said managers had to prod businesses to study the issue more and report more, invest in companies positioned to profit from climate change, put some of their money into funds that screen businesses for socially responsible behavior, and, if they own real estate, look to reduce the environmental impact of their buildings. The Investor Network founders said that one of their first moves would be to press the Securities and Exchange Commission to require more disclosure in corporate filings of climate risks and to give investors more leeway in forcing companies to allow shareholder resolutions on the subject at annual meetings. None of the activists said that they planned to divest themselves of the stocks of companies they viewed as lagging on climate concerns. Mr. Hevesi called divestment the last resort. Investors at UN Summit: Disclose Climate Costs Reuters News Service, Nov. 21, 2003 UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - State treasurers and pensions funds that help oversee $1 trillion in assets on Friday urged U.S. regulators and business leaders to force corporations to give investors more information on the financial risks from global climate change. Eight U.S. state and city treasurers and comptrollers and the leaders of two large labor pension funds issued a "call for action" at a day-long Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk held at U.N. headquarters. Executives from top Wall Street banks and fund management firms also attended the meeting. The plan basically asks the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to impose tighter disclosure, reporting and risk assessment requirements on corporations so that public pension funds can assess more accurately the potential financial risk to their shareholdings from climate change. The pension funds said a broad swath of industries could be vulnerable to new global warming regulations or possible future legal action. As an example, fund officials said any new regulation capping emissions of carbon dioxide by industrial firms could increase their costs substantially as they would have to use cleaner and more expensive fuels. In light of financial scandals at firms like Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., which have blindsided investors, "what we want is no surprises," said Nappier, who as the Connecticut treasurer helps oversee $19 billion. "We have certainly had enough of the unexpected, and this time we want to know up front and early on, we want to know what exposure is down the road and what damage is being done to our investments and to our economy," she said. 'THE DATA IS PILING UP' "Most of Wall Street today seems to ignore climate risk and feels more comfortable pretending that global warming will not affect their portfolios," said Leon Panetta, former director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. "The data is piling up and the trends are clear. In 2003, it is irresponsible for any major investor or fiduciary to ignore the risks of global warming," Panetta said, suggesting the lawyers who filed the first lawsuits against tobacco and asbestos firms were now looking at global warming. "How long will it take before someone takes a swing at an oil company or a power company?" he asked. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, now vice chairman of Metropolitan West Financial, attended the summit. He noted a recent report that China was drafting ambitious fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, to cut down on fuel use. "We could be in a situation where they are providing cars to markets through the years that greatly exceed the environment standards that we (in the United States) are used to building toward," Gore said. "We will be behind the curve in every way." Pressed on whether the public pension funds would divest companies that did not comply with their demands, New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi said: "Divesting is the last thing you want to do .... Once you divest you no longer have an influence over the company." However, he added: "You might have to divest at the end of a process and say 'this company is beyond the pale'."
it forces me to register...since i moved to the compound and stocked up on assault weapons, i don't register for anything. not even to vote. i did once register for more info on secret passwords for Mike Tyson's Ninetendo game...but when the phone started ringing late at night, i realized that was a big mistake.
BTW Max, If we've been destroying the planet since we began planting crops, that's one helluva quagmire.
Here you go... and by the way Max, you don't have to give them your real name or email adress... that is just wrong. Anytime I have to register for a site I make up a name and type in my email address as bob@blowme.com. _________________ December 10, 2003 Scientists Measure Human Impact on Climate By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:14 a.m. ET SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Measurements of ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice offered evidence that humans have been changing the global climate since thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Beginning 8,000 years ago, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide began to rise as humans started clearing forests, planting crops and raising livestock, a scientist said Tuesday. Methane levels started increasing 3,000 years later. The combined increases of the two greenhouse gases implicated in global warming were slow but steady and staved off what should have been a period of significant natural cooling, said Bill Ruddiman, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. The changes also disrupted regular patterns that dominated the 400,000 years of atmospheric history that scientists have teased from samples of ancient ice. ``You have 395,000 years of history, which sets some rules, and 5,000 years that break those rules,'' Ruddiman said. Ruddiman briefed reporters on his theory Tuesday at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Further details appear in the December issue of the journal Climatic Change. Previously, scientists widely assumed it was only with the onset of the factory age that human activity had any significant effect on the global climate. The prehistoric changes in carbon dioxide and methane levels have been noted before but were attributed to natural causes, Ruddiman said. ``It's a great new idea we need to talk about and evaluate,'' said Bette Otto-Bliesner, a paleoclimate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not connected with the research. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane naturally fluctuate, in part because of changes in the orbit of the Earth and the resulting variations in the amounts of sunlight. But human activity apparently thwarted expected decreases in the atmospheric concentrations of both gases. Leading the change was the revolutionary adoption, across both Europe and Asia, of agriculture and animal husbandry, Ruddiman said. Analysis of air trapped in ice cores drilled from the Antarctic ice sheet show anomalous increases in carbon dioxide levels beginning 8,000 years ago -- just as crop lands began to replace previously forested regions across Asia and Europe. About 5,000 years ago, the ice cores reflect a similarly anomalous rise in methane levels, this time tied to increased emissions from flooded rice fields, as well as burgeoning numbers of livestock, Ruddiman said. The prehistoric practices apparently overrode a buildup of ice that models predict should have occurred beginning 5,000 years ago.
Why not play it safe? It's only prudent to reexamine things when thousands of scientists say that American environmental policies might *literally* destroy the world as we know it. This isn't hyperbole anymore. It's simply not smart, or economical, to wait until we have 100-percent confirmation from 100-percent of the scientific community before we do anything. There's already a broad consensus -- but because a tiny percentage of scientists disagree, we're still ruining our children's air. I'm not saying cut down every smokestack in the country -- but it's time to start taking responsibility for our actions. We have to acknowledge that our lifestyles impact the rest of the planet. Hiding behind a handful of scientists (who invariably work for industry) is cowardly and dishonest. Worse, it'll only make things that much harder -- and expensive -- down the road.
