New Threat To Big Easy: Global Warming

Scientists Fear Rising Sea Levels Could Have Immediate Impact On New Orleans

(CBS)  The Army Corps of Engineers is rebuilding a stronger levee system in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. But scientists now see something more dangerous than seasonal hurricanes: global warming.

"Sea level is rising worldwide, and that's going to have an immediate impact on New Orleans," Tulane University geoscientist Torbjorn Tornqvist told CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.

"It's all related to global warming. That's what's happening. We've seen in the past century, sea level is rising four times faster than in the preceding 1,000 years," Torngvist says.

Waleed Abdalati is a NASA career scientist, one of the Bush administration's top researchers on climate change.

"The state of the world's ice is that it's changing — and predominantly in most parts of the world, it's shrinking," says Abdalati.

One vivid example is NASA satellite pictures of the North Pole ice cap in summer. Since 1979, it has shrunk more than 25 percent.

"You could see an ice-free Arctic in the summer, where no sea-ice cover survives the summer melt. That could happen in the next 40 to 60 years," Abdalati says.

Places at risk for a sea-level rise range from the San Francisco Bay area to South Florida to the Chesapeake Bay.

Abdalati studied a Greenland glacier that lost nearly five miles in the last six years, and now it's flowing faster.

"It doubled its speed, just enhancing the amount of ice that is flowing or flushing out into the fjord and later, to the sea," Abdalati explains.

And that means higher sea levels for New Orleans.

"We have to push harder than anyone else in the United States to reverse the problem of global warming because we are facing that problem here first," Tornqvist says.

It's a scientific problem that may now be getting a political solution.

[gggranroth]

There is virtually no intelligent or intelligible discussion on "Global Warming" possible in the U.S. because the conservative right refuses to see the reality looming over the horizon, and start clenching their teeth at the very phrase being pronounced. They politicize everything, and mindlessly side with business interests in all situations dealing with the environment. Then, implying that they know it's a fact, they wring their hands and say we can't do anything about "it" anyway, the "it" whose existence they adamantly deny.

[susanhelit]

During the 90's, what was being done about global warming was the same as ever - conservatives and big business pretending it didn't exist. Taking two different predictions - one saying the earth would get hotter, the other saying it would get colder - to mean that we could do nothing.

[susanhelit]

Emerging nations are doing some harm to the environment - doing what we did when we were an emerging nation - but we've got the money to change it, and we do far more damage than they do - use the most energy, consume the most products, and so on and so forth.

[susanhelit]

As to who is the biggest villian - that is such GARBAGE! Just ticks me off. Like we can pollute and waste and contribute to destroying the earth, because, after all, we're not the worst (maybe)! Yeah, let's throw our garbage out on the beach, because after all, that guy over there is throwing even more! It's all about the blame, and we can keep throwing it until we're past the point of no return and lose everything.

[susanhelit]

Keep throwing blame and changing nothing until we've lost some cities (and billions of dollars!) or we can make some changes, and pressure others to do likewise. So far, we've just said that even if everyone else does their part, we're not willing to do ours. We've even signed treaties, then run out of them, while the rest of the world signs up. Sounds like the villian to me!

[Syndicate]

The death of oil. In only a couple years I will be able to power my house from the sun :)

"Boeing Spectrolab Terrestrial Solar Cell Surpasses 40 Percent Efficiency
St. Louis, MO Wednesday, December 06, 2006 --
Boeing [NYSE: BA] today announced that Spectrolab, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary, has achieved a new world record in terrestrial concentrator solar cell efficiency. Using concentrated sunlight, Spectrolab demonstrated the ability of a photovoltaic cell to convert 40.7 percent of the sun%u2019s energy into electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy%u2019s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo., verified the milestone."

The rest can be found at:

http://www.spectrolab.com/com/news/news-detail.asp?id=172

[binkey3]

Do you all not realize that America is not the only country in the world that contributes to "Global Warming"? The last time I checked and larger country known as China has smoke stacks that produce a lot of... well Smoke. And doesn't that contributes to "Global Warming"? We here in America do have regulations that other countries don't even give a rats arse about. So why do we have to be the country to take care of "Global Warming" no one else is even remotely helping curb it.

[webdepot]

hey binkey --

good stand buddy...
"others aren't doing anything, so why should we" you say, as our coastal cities slowly go under the tide of a rising ocean... brilliant

Maybe, just maybe, since we are, and have been for the past 100 years, the largest consumer of oil in the world... maybe, just maybe, we are the most responsible for the current situation..

And as some idiot tried to push the blame onto the Clinton years... at least three times during his tenure, auto efficiency improvements were mandated and smokestack emmissions reductions were mandated...

and during Bush's tenure, nothing on autos, and restrictions REMOVED on how much pollution smokestacks could pump into the air... not to mention his withdrawal from any type of participation in the Kyoto Treaty. Bush claims global warming is a myth and voodoo science... must be the ice caps are melting by "intelligent design"..

[bburton8]

The car manufactures will not produce a engine that runs on anything else but gas unless mandated by goverment. Give them 10 years to do so and I bet it will happen. Yeah, the goverment makes lots of money from the oil industry, but in the long run we will all be losers!

[gaye5]

There is something fishy about what we are being told about global warming, many things simply dont add up...
All this global warming seems to have happened very quickly and very conveniently for industries...it is only a few years ago that we were told that we were going into an Ice age...???
IF??? global warming is caused by the increasing CO2's then why the hang have governments not put out programmes for planted more trees which we have been taught from school actually absorbs CO2... get the dole bludgers onto greening deserts and replanting where they are taking trees from...

One then could wonder as to if the fast increase in CO2's is because of the destruction of so many trees, and I am not a greenie,,, But I have a different and possible good reason for global warming, read.... Global Warming Hysteria Feed By False Assumptions.....COMMENTARY...Stern Review By BJORN LOMBORG WSJ November 2, 2006; Page A12.... or
The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame...By Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah...(Filed: 18/07/2004)...
or
SUV's On Jupiter?...Are humans responsible for climate change on the outer reaches of the solar system, or is it the sun? ....Paul Joseph Watson...Prison Planet ...Thursday, November 16, 2006... and more on the sun heating the galaxy...
Are we being duped....

[rf35]

Gaye5,
I doubt we're being duped. I didn't see "Dr" in front of any of the names you mentioned. Sounds like conspiracy theorists. Maybe aliens are really responsible for global warming! And if the government can%u2019t be expected to pass laws curbing carbon emissions, how the heck could we expect them to plant trees? Cutting emissions could result in money lost by industry, but planting trees would require the active spending of money. Won%u2019t happen. Besides, I don%u2019t think we could plant enough trees to reverse the current trend. Not to mention the fact that trees take decades to grow into the CO2-guzzling giants that might help. Anyway, if global warming is being caused by the sun heating up (which it isn%u2019t), then what good would more trees do? More shade?

P.S. I misspoke. The sun IS heating up. In about 4 billion years, we should notice the change as our sun starts fusing heavier elements, expands into a red giant, and engulfs the inner solar system.

[falcore1]

I urge everyone to see Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth" He has been aware of global warming since his college days, and what one comes away with after watching this film is this man could have been president. A man dedicated to saving the planet instead of a man dedicated to war. By the way, if the US doesn't decrease emissions, I would move out of Florida. It WILL be under water.