CO2 emissions to cause catastrophic rise in sea levels, warns top NASA climatologist

(NaturalNews) Dr. Jim Hansen, a NASA climatologist, announced in an interview with The Independent that the world is turning into a different planet due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
Hansen stated that the Earth's population has less than a decade to stop global warming from changing the world forever, and noted that the effects on the climate were already observable.
"We just cannot burn all the fossil fuels in the ground," he said. "If we do, we will end up with a different planet. I mean a planet with no ice in the Arctic, and a planet where warming is so large that it's going to have a large effect in terms of sea level rises and the extinction of species."
Hansen indicated that global warming is causing dangerous "positive feedbacks" in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, which can accelerate the rate of climate change. One such feedback is the receding sea ice, which subsequently increases Arctic temperatures because the amount of sunlight and heat reflected back into space is reduced. The melting ice also releases methane, which is 20 times more dangerous as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, Hansen said.
"If we go another 10 years, by 2015, at the current rate of growth of CO2 emissions, which is about 2 percent per year, the emissions in 2015 will be 35 percent larger than they were in 2000," he said. "But if we want to get on a scenario that keeps global temperature in the range that it's been in for the last million years, we would need to decrease the emissions by something of the order of 25 percent by the middle of the century, and by something like 75 percent by the end of the century."
According to Hansen, the current trend will eventually cause the collapse of ice sheets in Greenland and the west Antarctic, which would cause massive increases in sea levels over the next couple of decades. This is especially worrying, Hansen pointed out, since about 50 percent of the world's population lives within 15 miles of a coastline
"The last time it was 3 degrees (Celsius) warmer, sea levels were 25 meters higher, plus or minus 10 meters. You'd not get that in one century, but you could get several meters in one century," he said. "The problem is that once you get the process started and well on the way, it's impossible to prevent it. That's why we need to address the issue before it gets out of control."
Human beings are not the only species in jeopardy, Hansen noted, as some plant and animal species could be "pushed off the planet" by rising temperatures. If the temperatures continue to rise, isotherms -- lines of equal temperature -- will begin to travel toward the poles at about 31 miles per decade, while the average rate of species migration is only about 3.7 miles per decade.
"Those species at high latitudes have no place to go to," Hansen said. "Many of them will be in trouble."
Hansen was one of the first scientists to warn of the effects of climate change in testimony to Congress in 1988, and made headlines last year when he complained of Bush-appointed NASA public relations officers limiting his access to the media in order to prevent him from discussing global warming. White House officials denied the allegations, but while Hansen said he now feels able to speak out, he reported that other scientists still feel gagged.

Virgin Group CEO offers $25 million prize to solve global warming challenge

(NaturalNews) British billionaire Richard Branson revealed on Friday that he is offering $25 million to anyone who can create a technology that will clean out greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.
The news conference had Branson flanked by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and British ex-diplomat Crispin Tickell. The goal of the prize is to tackle one of man's greatest issues – global warming – by spurring development of new technology.
"Man created the problem and therefore man should solve the problem," Branson said of greenhouse gases at a news conference.
The prize will go to anyone who can remove one billion tons of greenhouse gas each year over the course of ten years. The winner will receive $5 million.
Gore, who made the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", will be one of six judges for the contest, dubbed the Virgin Earth Challenge.
The move by Branson comes just five months after his announcement that he would commit $3 billion of Virgin's profits to fight global warming over the next 10 years.
At the news conference, Branson shrugged off the fact that his airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Express, are a part of the greenhouse gas problem. Removing an airline from the market won't remove the number of commercial planes in flight, he said, because other companies would take over that market share.
Airline emissions represent 3 percent of all contributors to greenhouse gases -- much less than automobiles -- but that 3 percent represents more than 370 million tons of CO2 a year. However, unlike the automotive industry's advances with hybrid cars, more efficient jet fuels are yet to be seen, Steve Rayner, a professor of science and civilization at Oxford University, told the New York Times.
"This project may hold particular appeal in the aviation industry as there really are no other viable, cleaner fuels in the pipeline," Rayner said. "I think that's why Branson has latched onto this."
Earth's atmosphere currently has 200 metric gigatons of carbon in it, accelerated by the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, said Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery via video link at the conference. The increase in greenhouse gases from factories and burning fossil fuels have changed the environment we live in – creating increased carbon concentrations by 100 parts per million in the air, and raised temperatures that correlate to rising sea levels, floods and storms.
"We are now facing a planetary emergency. The planet has a fever," Gore said at the news conference. "This is an initiative to stimulate someone to do something that no one knows how to do. This is right at the cutting edge."

Coming global warming will cause climate zone migration, species extinction

(NaturalNews) By the year 2100, global warming likely will cause the extinction of numerous species by eliminating the climate zones in which they are able to live, according to study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy Of Sciences.Using data and scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers predicted that global warming will cause currently existing climate zones to move further toward the poles. This will cause the elimination of the climate regions closest to the poles or near the tops of tropical mountains, including the tropical Andes, southeast Australia, the African rift mountains, the Angolan and Zambian Highlands, the South African Cape region, and parts of the Himalayas and Arctic."How do you conserve the biological diversity of these entire systems if the physical environment is changing and potentially disappearing?" said lead author John Williams.The researchers also predicted that the species least likely to be able to adapt or migrate along with their preferred climate zones are those currently living in relatively stable tropical and subtropical climates. This means that species diversity in Amazon and Indonesian rainforests is likely to plummet."One of the things that comes from our paper is that because the species that live in the tropics are adapted or have evolved for a reduced range of variability, it may be the two- to three-degree temperature change in the tropics may be more significant, say, than a five to eight-degree change in high latitudes," Williams said. To date, however, more attention has focused on global warming's impacts on the Arctic, which are being felt more quickly.The study also concluded that by 2100, climate zones will have changed over 12 to 39 percent of the Earth's land surface. These results came from using a scenario that presumes a continuation of current patterns of fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. Assuming continued industrial development in a less emissions-intensive pattern, the predicted change was over 4 to 20 percent of the planet's land surface.

Global Warming Versus Planet Poisoning

(NaturalNews) Al Gore recently won a Nobel Prize for his documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth”. Since then, there has been much debate over whether or not Mr. Gore deserved this accolade and thus rekindled the debate over global warming in general. This seems to be the point of the movie in the first place, to focus our attention on climate change and what we can do about it. Now if only someone equally famous would put together a documentary on how synthetic chemicals are killing us and the planet.The effects of carbon emissions from our insatiable appetite for energy may be melting the polar ice caps and endangering the polar bears, but perchlorate in our ground water is compromising the healthy function of the thyroid in both man and beast. Increasingly prescribed over the decades, synthetic hormones have also found their way into our lakes, streams and drinking water and already there are populations of frogs found with both male and female organs. Though banned more than 30 years ago, DDT can still be found in the breast milk of women all over the globe.Since the Second World War, over 80,000 new synthetic chemicals have been manufactured and released into our environment, with 1,500 new chemicals introduced every year. With this increase come all sorts of problems with adverse interactions and unknown synergistic effects. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to isolate any one chemical in the body to find harmful effects. We are all walking test tubes with hundreds of toxins interacting in our liver, fat stores and active blood stream.The medical research community continues to look for single smoking guns. A drug that cures cancer or a toxin that causes it. None of it is that simple. With research showing one out of three people in the U.S. will develop cancer in their lifetime, do we really think that global warming is our biggest concern? Yes, we should save energy and cut green house gases. But we should also quit poisoning ourselves and the planet. Eating healthy, fresh foods, cleaning with a little “elbow grease” instead of “Scrub Free”, and purchasing natural products will do more for us and the planet than any synthetic chemical or drug ever could.

Global warming battle goes local as city mayors launch green initiatives

(NaturalNews) Mayors from around the world presented plans to reduce their cities' greenhouse gas emissions at an international conference of mayors in New York City earlier this year. "Unfortunately, it has fallen to the mayors to do it because at the federal level in this country and other countries, they seem to be tied up," said Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York.At the conference, Bloomberg spoke about his 127-point plan to reduce New York's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030. On the opposite side of the continent, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has promised to reduce that city's emissions by 35 percent in the same time frame. Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has committed to getting his city's residents to bring their carbon dioxide emissions back below 1990 levels within the next five years.In addition, 16 major U.S. cities have signed up for a plan that allows them to borrow money to increase the energy efficiency of their buildings, then to pay back those loans through the resulting energy savings.The local initiatives come in the face of a continuing unwillingness by the federal government to address the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. The United States has made its opposition clear to any international treaties that would compel it to reduce such emissions, including expansions to the Kyoto Protocol or discussions at the upcoming G-8 summit.Due to a recent Supreme Court ruling, however, President Bush signed an executive order on May 14 directing federal agencies to develop rules by the end of the year that would "cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles."For some, the end of the year is not nearly soon enough. California's attorney general, Jerry Brown, has asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow 12 states, including California, to enact their own rules sooner. The states want to require automakers to guarantee a 25 percent emissions reduction from all cars and light trucks and an 18 percent reduction from all SUVs beginning with the 2009 model year.

Global Warming to Hammer U.S. Northeast with Radical Weather, Warn Scientists

(NaturalNews) A recent report has enumerated the catastrophic changes that the northeastern United States can expect due to global warming, particularly if local and global greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed.The report, "Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast," was a joint project of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment, the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 50 scientists and economists. It looks at the likely outcomes of two different climate change scenarios, one assuming a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the other assuming significantly lower emissions due to a shift to cleaner energy sources.The high-emissions scenario predicts an 8- to 12-degree Fahrenheit increase in winter temperatures and a 6- to 14-degree increase in summer temperatures, while the lower-emissions scenario predicts increases of 5 to 8 and 3 to 7 degrees, respectively. The global sea level is expected to rise 10 to 23 inches under the high-emissions scenario, and 7 to 14 under the lower one. By 2100, these increases will lead to New York City experiencing what are currently once-a-century floods every 10 years under the high-emissions scenario and twice a decade under the lower scenario.But in some measures, even lower emissions will make little difference. Coastal cities such as Boston are expected to experience formerly once-a-century floods once every two to four years by 2050 and once a year by 2100 under either scenario. Warming ocean temperatures will drive many fish and shellfish species north, leading to the disappearance of cod and lobster south of Cape Cod before 2100.The report concludes that while the Northeast has limited ability to reduce global emissions, a reduction of regional emissions to 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 would be enough to bring emissions onto the level of the lower-emissions scenario used in the study.

Excess Ozone Chokes Plants, Accelerates Global Warming

(NaturalNews) The chemical known as ozone may be making a much more significant contribution to global warming than scientists had previously thought, according to a new study published in the journal Nature."Ozone could be twice as important as we previously thought as a driver of climate change," said study co-author Peter Cox.Ozone occurs naturally in the upper atmosphere, but is produced in the lower atmosphere when sunlight strikes industrial pollutants such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxides.Scientists have long known that ozone is a greenhouse gas, trapping radiation within the atmosphere and leading to rising global temperatures. But the new study suggests that ozone may have a much more significant climate impact by adversely affecting plants' ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.According to the researchers, high concentrations of ozone and carbon dioxide damage plants' ability to engage in photosynthesis. This weakens the plants, causing their stomata (pores in the leaves) to close. In turn, this reduces that amount of carbon dioxide or ozone that the plants are able to absorb.Because of this complex interaction, scientists previously did not know how significant of an effect ozone pollution had on plants' ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To answer the question, researchers designed two computer models to test how plants would be affected by ozone if they had either high or low sensitivity. They then used these models to estimate the predicted effect of ozone on plants' ability to filter out carbon dioxide using projected ozone levels from 1900 to 2100.Under the high-sensitivity model, plants' ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was reduced by 23 percent. Even under the low-sensitivity model, it was reduced by 14 percent."Calculations of the efficiency of land ecosystems to take up carbon would be less efficient than we thought previously," Cox said. "The indirect effect is of a similar magnitude, or even larger, than the direct effect. Arguably, we have been looking in the wrong place for the key impacts of ozone."