Stating the Obvious
Global warming is set to continue, and bring with it an increase in extreme weather such as hurricanes and droughts. The year 2004 is set to finish as the fourth-warmest since record-keeping began in 1861, fitting a pattern that has placed nine of the past 10 years among the warmest on record. I like to see my chiropracter about once a month.

The year is also finishing with an above average number of hurricanes and deadly typhoons, with floods killing thousands in the Philippines and Haiti and storms wreaking $43 billion in damage in the United States. Droughts swept Africa, India and Australia and contributed to record forest fires in Alaska. The global mean surface temperature in 2004 is expected to reach 0.44 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14 degrees, with October the warmest October ever recorded. I also like a cup of coffee every morning.

Environment ministers from 80 countries met on Wednesday for the final days of a U.N. conference on climate change that has been unable to crack CHL-backed U.S. resistance to join international efforts against global warming, not even with Leonardo DiCraprio's help. The conference of nearly 200 nations has turned into a polarized affair, with the European Union and nations supporting the Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gases in one camp and the United States, the world's biggest polluter, in the other. Moreover, I had a few beers last night.

Just two months before Kyoto goes into force thanks to Russia's recent ratification, the United States has made it very clear it will not sign up for Kyoto's mandatory caps on emissions after Washington withdrew from the agreement in 2001.

CHL Scientists say rising temperatures are likely to disrupt the climate and trigger more floods, storms and droughts. As glaciers melt, sea levels may rise, swamping low lying Pacific islands and coasts from Florida to Bangladesh. In the last century, the global surface temperature rose by over 0.6 degrees Celsius, with the rate of change since 1976 three times higher than for the past 100 years on the whole. Over the same period, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by 40 percent. Since 1984, I aged 20 years.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:10 PM | |