Global Warming To Hit World's Poor: Report

Climate Change Summary Says Asia And Africa Will See Danger, Death, And Extinction Of Species Unless Countries Adapt

(CBS/AP)  James Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, noted that food production would rise initially, but also said projected increased coastal flooding is "of high concern."

"This report ... is a challenge to government, it's a challenge to the U.S. Congress. It paints a very clear and disturbing picture of the consequences," Ben Dunham of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group told CBS News.

Schneider said a main message is not just what will happen, but what already has started: melting glaciers, stronger hurricanes, deadlier heat waves, and disappearing or moving species.

Meanwhile, a study by the University of Minnesota Duluth reports that Lake Superior has been warming even faster than the climate around it since the late 1970s due to reduced ice cover.

Summer surface temperatures on the famously cold lake have increased about 4.5 degrees since 1979, compared with about a 2.7-degree increase in the region's annual average air temperature, the researchers found. The lake's "summer season" is now beginning about two weeks earlier than it did 27 years ago.

"Milder winters are causing less ice cover. In fact, it turns out that summer temperatures are more strongly a function of how much ice there is the previous winter than of the summer climatological conditions," Jay Austin, an assistant professor with the university's Large Lakes Observatory and Department of Physics, told CBS News. Austin co-authored the study with geology professor Steve Colman.

All the changes can be traced directly to greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.

"There is a discernible human influence on these changes" that are already occurring as threats to species, flooding, extreme events such as heat waves and hurricanes, said NASA scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, a lead author on the chapter detailing what has happened.

Martin Parry, who conducted the closed-door negotiations, said with 29,000 sets of data from every continent, including Antarctica, the report firmly and finally established "a man-made climate signal coming through on plants, water and ice."

"For the first time, we are not just arm-waving with models," Parry said.

But the models the scientists did use for their forecasts gave them plenty of confidence in their findings. Near-term effects of fewer cold days — increased food production, decreased heating bills — are more than 99 percent certain, the report said. Increased heat waves that cut food production in warmer climates and increase wildfires, demand on water and deaths from excessive heat among the poor, elderly and very young are more than 90 percent likely.

There is a better than two-out-of-three chance that more land will be affected by drought, widespread water stress, food shortages, malnutrition, and disruption to coastal life from storms, the report said.

But many of the worst effects are not locked into the future, the report said in its final pages. Humans can build better structures, adapt to future global warming threats and can stave off many by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said.

"There are things that can be done now, but it's much better if it can be done now rather than later," said scientist and report author David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma.

Because carbon dioxide stays in the air for nearly a century, it will be decades before society sees that changes make a difference on global warming effects, scientists said.

"We can fix this," by investing a small part of the world's economic growth rate, said Schneider. "It's trillions of dollars, but it's a very trivial thing."

[erasmus6]

rf35- now there is something that you and I both agree on! Let's hope it's soon.

[rf35]

News flash! Global warming on Mars since the 1970s is comparable to global warming on Earth. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17952631
Posted by octavianfdlr at 06:04 AM : Apr 09, 2007

Good. Move to Mars, then. And please take didntinhale and HawkSprings with you. Limbaugh sheep.

[rheola-2009]

octavianfdlr

Maybe you will be the Pundit capable of replying to my request in my post at 1.44am.

[octavianfdlr]

News flash! Global warming on Mars since the 1970s is comparable to global warming on Earth. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17952631

[erasmus6]

rheola
Sorry, I must be tired. I realize what you are saying now about your timings on the board.

[erasmus6]

rheola
When you post your comments the only time that shows is the eastern U.S. time.
Actually if it is late afternoon there, you are probably more than 12 hours ahead of me.

[rheola-2009]

Erasmus6

Good day mate

Goodness me, you are on the ball, though I suppose my timings on the board are a bit of a giveaway.
I nowadays tend not to let on of my whereabouts after copping some abuse from a couple of the more ignorant posting at that time.
I have just returned from a late afternoon dog walking exercise.

I have a number of rellies [distant] in the Lansing area, my Great Grandfather is from Ontario.

Have a great one, that is what is left of it.

[erasmus6]

rheola
Yes, I think everybody has gone to bed. The CBS site originates from the east in the U.S. A few hours ahead of me and I think you are something like 12 hours ahead of me. It is almost my bedtime too, I think.
It took a few minutes for the cbs website to come up here too, when I came on.

[rheola-2009]

Erasmus6
It appears that you and I may be all that are at present in the world of the awake, in more ways than 1, I am also going off for a little while, have a pressing engagement.
Will be back in an hour or so.I disappeared earlier, because I could get the CBS site to come up, not sure if prob at this end or their end, however back again.

[rheola-2009]

So many of you folks have an Al Gore blockage mentality.

It appears that you are so narrow minded and inward thinking, [that last may be beyond some]
you are incapable of seeing that Al Gore is only one of thousands, many of whom are so much more competent to speak out on this matter than is Al Gore, and are in fact trying to make those who for whatever reason, are avoiding the admission of the possibility a terrible situation arising.

Let one of you Pundits explain to me with at least a little logic, why if in case your belief is wrong, should not those who believe otherwse, begin to make the necessary plans to overcome, what may if left to long, become an irreversable disaster situation.
Surely only a total fool, in view of the evidence being presented, could argue against preparations being made to at least attempt to alleviate this potentially massive problem for what is after all, our world, not just the world of a selfish and materialistic few.

[erasmus6]

HawkSprings, HawkSprings, HawkSprings! when are you going to drop this Al Gore b-u-l-l-c-r-a-p!
Yes, he owns more than one home, get over it!
He is probably doing 100 times more than you or I are doing. Of course he has more money and is able to do more, but what are you doing, probably nothing!
You know what I think is the biggest problem here? Global warming is caused from us humans. The blame is on us. There are people who can't take any kind of criticism or blame. When they are criticized, they immediately go on the defensive. Then there is the other kind of person, the ones that don't like being told what to do. Which one are you?
When someone so desparately tries to deny something that is so obvious, it tells me there is something else going on there.

[actornaught]

Ya gotta let go of your straw man methodology, not launch it into the stratosphere. your rage is totally self inflicted. for example, Gore is a pretty minor player, i haven't even seen his movie. and don't forget, you're out here bleeting away, too, having just joined the rest of us sheep!

[hawksprings]

Plus the ONE SPOT you're referring to is 2/3 of the US, quite a "spot" to be so below normal.

I don't have a problem saying the climate is getting warmer.

I just don't buy in to the Church Of Global Warming's Doom and Gloom Hysteria, led by the Holy Father Algore, whom you Global Warming Sheep worship as he sits beside his heated pool at his energy-hog mansion.

[actornaught]

your first paragraph is your usual straw man fantasy, but then you have an interesting change in position, maybe there's hope for you after all, rush...

[hawksprings]

One day in one spot IS meaningless, but you watch this summer when a heat wave hits ONE SPOT and all you'll hear about in the news is how it's because of Human-caused Global Warming and it's OUR FAULT.

So the climate's getting warmer, big deal.
It's done it before and it's doing it again.

[actornaught]

one day in one spot is utterly meaningless.

100 days in a 100 places is meaningless, etc.

anyway, you think global warming is just not happening?

nevermind...

[hawksprings]

I think it's Algore who has the hidden agenda.

Your cute little illustration of the sick child and the doctors breaks down on so many levels, it's hard to pick where to start.

But for one, these same doctors told me 35 years ago that my child was going to freeze to death.
Some of these doctors have told me I was going to die of air pollution, lack of clean water, of the bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease, and twenty other hysterias.

Plus, this child is the only one they've ever had for a patient, in the grand scheme of things, it's so much older than the doctors are that their existence on it is the tiniest blip in time, and so they haven't seen it in other phases of it's life, and they don't all agree if it's really sick or not.

By the way, it's 30 degrees BELOW NORMAL today where I live.

[actornaught]

"miss the point"? "just fine"? we see a few that have to think that, all right.

even W has conceded that global warming is happening, as the vast majority that's paying attention recognizes. any public personality that tells you otherwise has a hidden agenda.

[hawksprings]

You miss the point. Many of us think the child is just fine.

[erasmus6]

Thank you, actornaught, I greatly appreciate you adding that for me!