WASHINGTON – Since the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming, climate change actually indicate worse symptoms and more rapidly – than the worst estimates in 1997.

As the world during latest dozen years talk about global warming, Arctic sea which had been frozen, now melts into new lines of shipping. In Greenland and Antarctica, the ice has been reduced trillions of tons. Glaciers in Europe mountains, South America, Asia, and Africa rapidly shrinking.

Along with that also, before the climate summit in Copenhagen next month, the facts of other climate change continues, among others:

* All the oceans in the world have been rising 1.5 inches

* Summer and more severe forest fires around the world, from America to the western part of Australia, even until the Sahel Desert in north Africa.

* Many species are now threatened because of climate changes. Not only Polar bears that struggling to migrate (which has become an icon of global warming), but also the butterflies that are now fragile, many species of frogs, and also pine forests in North America.

* The temperature during the last 12 years is 0.4 degrees warmer than the 12 years prior to 1997

Previously, in 90’s, Researchers estimates there are severe climate change in present day, but no one thought it would happen so soon. "The latest research states that our situation is more complicated than previously suspected," said Janos Pasztor, climate advisor to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

Since the agreement to reduce pollution, greenhouse gas effect was signed in Kyoto, Japan, December 1997, the level of carbon dioxide in the air has increased 6.5 percent. Leaders from around the world will meet in Copenhagen next month to form a further agreement, which according to President Barack Obama "will have a direct impact operationally …. and the progress of the world unite in an effort to find solutions."

Even so, in fact the last attempt in Kyoto did not get the desired results.

From 1997 to 2008, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use has increased 31 percent, emissions of greenhouse effect gases in the United States also rose 3.7 percent. Emissions from China, which is now the biggest cause of pollution for this type, has doubled during this period of 12 years. When the U.S. Senate earlier objection on the approval and President George W. Bush withdrew from it, It means that 3 of the world’s biggest polluting countries- the U.S., China, and India – did not participate in emission reduction agreements. Developing countries not included in the Kyoto protocol and now it will be one of the main problems in Copenhagen.

And the greenhouse gas effect formation was stronger and faster impact than expected, the scientists said. "In 1997, the impact of climate change is considered low; now its rate of change is faster," said Virginia Burkett, global climate change researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey.

That last statement was worried to former Vice President Al Gore, who helped mediate an agreement by the end of the meeting in Kyoto. "The most serious difference that we experience is the acceleration of the crisis itself," Gore said in an interview this month.

In 1997, global warming is the subject of climate scientists, environmental experts, and lobbyists policy. Now, biologists, lawyers, economists, engineers, insurance analysts, risk managers, disaster experts, commodity trader, nutritionists, ethicists, and even psychologists involved in the topic of global warming.

"We have been running from 1997, where global warming is an abstract issue among scholars, until now where the problem is discussed of all people," said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria.

The most Worried Changes in the last 12 years to most scientists are what happened in the Arctic, where summer sea ice melt, and the loss of grounded ice masses on the mainland key locations around the world. Everything is happening much faster than expected.

Previously in the year 1997 no one had thought that the Arctic sea ice melt – this started about 5 years ago, – says Weaver. From 1993 to 1997, sea ice is usually smaller approximately 2.7 million square miles in the summer. In the last five years an average of only 2 million square miles. The difference was as big as Alaska.

Antarctic sea ice has increased a little, due to the cold effect of the hole in the ozone, according to the British Antarctic Survey. In the same time, a large chunks of ice getting off the Antarctic peninsula.

Although ice in the Arctic Ocean did not raise the sea level, but the giant ice melts and glaciers could raise sea level. The second case occurred rapidly at both poles of the earth.

Measurements show that since 2000, Greenland has lost more than 1.5 trillion tons of ice, while Antarctica 1 trillion tons since 2002. According to some reports from the Inter-Government Council for Climate Change, the scientists did not anticipate the loss of ice in Antarctica, said Weaver. And the speed  of melting ice is higher, so that the Greenland ice is now melting twice as fast than seven years ago, thus raising the sea level.

Glacier shrink around the world three times faster than it was in 1970s and the average of each glacier has lost ice as thick as 25 feet (7.62 m) since 1997, said Michael Zemp, researchers at the World Glacier Supervisory Board at the University of Zurich.

"The glacier is a reliable measure of climate," said Zemp. "What has happened is that the loss of ice is faster."

And the permafrost – the frozen region in the north is also melt with alarming speed, said Burkett.

There is one more impact of global warming – became known only after the year 1997 – that makes scientists bite fingers. All the oceans more acidic because of carbon dioxide is absorbed by water. This causes pickling, an issue that had not even given a name until the last few years.

The more acidic water will damage corals, shellfish, and plankton, the end threaten the ocean food chain, said the biologists.

In the year 1997, "is not about plants and animals" in terms of global warming. But now they come under threat, says Stanford University biologist Terry Root. Now scientists are thinking about any species that can be saved from extinction and which has not helped. Polar bears are the first species on the federal list of endangered species, and small animal of similar to American rabbit, Pika, probably also threatened.

More than 37 million hectares of pine forests in Canada and the United States has been destroyed by the beetles which not die (population control) because the winter was not as cold as before anymore. And in the western U.S., the number of regions that caught fire doubled.

Colorado River reservoirs, major water provider for the American West, nearly full in 1999, but in the year 2007 half of the water supply has gone after the area suffered a prolonged drought the worst in a century records.

Insurance losses and blackouts loomed and experts say that global warming has also share to this problem. The number of power blackouts in the United States regarding weather from 2004-2008 seven times higher than in 1993-1997, said Evan Mills, researchers from the  Lawrence Berkeley National.

"The message in terms of science is that we now know more than in 1997, and everything is bad news," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Center on Global Climate Change at Pew. "The situation is worse than any other estimates."

Popularity: 1% [?]

About Admin

Blogging and, especially Wordpress lover. He can tweak small wordpress code to meet any need. Not a designer, though. Interested in programming world. He loves PHP and Visual Basic. You can argue, but I think, wordpress platform is the best blog platform today. Website | Email