lightblueline

Professor S. Antony Norbert, Department of Geography, University of Colombo writes in the Colombo Daily News (October 16, 2007) about the Catastrophic nature of Global Warming

Here is the article:

"The phrase ‘Global Warming’ has become familiar recently as environmental issues have hit the headlines. Within the past decade, there has been a considerable rise in public awareness and interest in climate change and in the possible impact of human activities on global climate.

Climate modelers at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science at Columbia University have recently reports the results of a study based on their latest models. This study indicates that the Eastern US, from Chicago to Atlanta to Washington, may experience summer temperature extremes several degrees hotter than current conditions by the year 2080, due to the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.

A computer model projection of average daily maximum temperatures over the eastern United States for July 2085 (left) and July 1993 (right). Areas in violet shading show temperatures of 26°C (79°F); green 30°C (86°F); yellow 34°C (93°F); red 38°C (100°F); dark purple 42°C (108°F). Credit: NASA/GISS

A year-long series of reports on the science and the impacts of climate change, this program offers schools and the public a wealth of information.
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Recently the National Academy of Sciences held a review of the current and future scientific needs for satellites that provide data about the Earth system and its climate. This review concluded that since 2000 NASA's Earth science satellite program has been failing to meet the needs of scientists to a steady and improving data resource. In an editorial in the Boston Globe (January 31, 2007), Derrick Z. Jackson describes this as President Bush's "Sputnik Moment," and quotes the NAS report's cochair:

"'Since 2000, this thing has gone off a cliff,' said Berrien Moore, cochair of the National Academy of Sciences panel on studying Earth from space and director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire. Moore said the Bush administration has created a 'perfect storm' with the 'collapse of the earth science budget, down 30 percent at NASA,' and the inept development of a polar-orbiting environmental satellite system by NOAA and the Pentagon. The system is three years behind schedule and $3 billion over budget, and many climate-detection instruments have been thrown out to slash costs.

The Washington Post maintains an archive on its reporting about climate change:

The Threat of Climate Change

This archive includes articles about policy, science, and impacts. It traces the Bush Administration's stance on climate change over the years.

This Japan Times (conservative) Editorial outlines the results of the Stern Report. It notes that rather immediate human inputs to the climate will have extreme longer term impacts:

"Another report has highlighted evidence of the serious, long-term consequences of global warming. Yet governments continue to pay only lip service to the threat. As the new study makes clear, the cost of environmental destruction will be severe -- but there is still time to avoid the worst impacts, if the world takes immediate and cooperative action.

The latest warning is from former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, who was tasked by Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer with providing an independent assessment of the economics of climate change. His conclusions are striking and simple. First, "the scientific evidence points to increasing risks of serious, irreversible impacts from climate change associated with business-as-usual paths for emissions."

Today the British Government release a report on the economic consequences of global warming. The Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change offers a stark picture of how the changing climate will cost the world's nations trillions of Euros, a cost borne disproportionately by lesser developed nations. On the topic of the science of climate change and sea level rise, the Report offers the following: "As global temperatures continue to rise, so do the risks of additional sea level contributions from large-scale melting or collapse of ice sheets. If the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets began to melt irreversibly, the world would be committed to substantial increases in sea level in the range 5 – 12 m over a timescale of centuries to millennia" (p. 16).

The BBC has released a report entitled "Earth - melting in the heat?" which outlines current studies about global climate change. While the lightblueline has been looking at ice melting in Greenland, the BBC also gives some very interesting information about the Antarctic.
"Huge, pristine, dramatic, unforgiving; the Antarctic is where the biggest of all global changes could begin.

There is so much ice here that if it all melted, sea levels globally would rise hugely - perhaps as much as 80m. Say goodbye to London, New York, Sydney, Bangkok, Rio... in fact, the majority of the world's major cities.