Global warming a scary reality

Armed with new data after a new study, scientists set aside all doubts in rational human mind about Global Warming.

Global warming is a reality and the study conducted by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reveals that global warming has raised the temperature of the world’s oceans and places the blame squarely on man-made greenhouse gases.

New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well underway, said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The implications can be very scary. In next 20 years the façade of earth can change, there will be water shortages, melting of glaciers and other serious problems even if an immediate effort was made to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.

“The real place to look is in the ocean,” Barnett told a news conference.

His team used millions of temperature readings made by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate Steady Ocean warming.

A Bush administration spokesman greeted news of the study with indifference.

“Our position has been the same for a long time,” said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “The science of global climate change is uncertain.”

Holbrook said the administration has already pledged to spend nearly US$2 billion a year to study climate change on its own and is committed to policies that cut greenhouse gases significantly by 2012.

Still, the administration is often criticized around the world for not taking global warming more seriously, in part because of fears that more stringent greenhouse gas emission laws could hurt its economy.

The report was published one day after the United Nations Kyoto Protocol took effect, a 141-nation environmental pact the United States government has spurned for several reasons, including stated doubts about whether global warming is occurring and is caused by people.

The conference also heard a gloomy analysis of the way the North Atlantic Ocean is reacting to global warming from Ruth Curry of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Her new study showed that vast amounts of fresh water more than 20,000 cubic kilometers have been added to the northernmost parts of the ocean over the past 40 years because the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting.