The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations issued a their latest report today, conclding that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. [See here, here, and here.]
The report, using their strongest language yet on the issue, said now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries," no matter how much humans control their pollution. "The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the report.
The report finds that sea levels will rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100, and it also concluded that seas would continue to rise, and crowded coasts retreat, for at least 1,000 years to come (by comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century).
The report also finds a new wrinkle in the climate change story: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when partly dissolved. Marine biologists have said that could imperil some kinds of corals and plankton.
The President of the United States said, “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”
Oh, sorry. That wasn't the current President speaking.
It was President Lyndon Johnson.
In 1965.
Living in his own private reality bubble, the current President, "President" Bush, is rejecting mandatory carbon caps, but likes the idea of giant space mirrors.
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