Thought you weather watchers might be interested in this NOAA site:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/research/1998/ann/ann98.html
as well as in the following news story, gleaned from the /S.F.
Chronicle/ today by Darth Cheezer.
peace
misha
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Warning On Impact Of Global Warming
Scientists forecast economic disruption
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Friday, January 29, 1999
``Greenhouse gases'' rising into the atmosphere from burning fossil
fuels and other pollutants will increase the pace of global warming
and disrupt many regions of the world, leaders of a prestigious
scientific organization warned yesterday.
Those gases could persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years,
and despite many uncertainties about just how high worldwide
temperatures might go and how to combat the climate changes, new
strategies must be developed to deal with the problem, the scientists
said.
The warning was issued yesterday by the 26-member council of the
American Geophysical Union, an international organization of
scientists whose 35,000 members include most of the foremost
specialists who study the atmosphere, the oceans, the record of
Earth's rising temperatures, and the evidence of global climates from
past ice ages to today's forests and deserts.
AVAILABLE EVIDENCE RESEARCHED
More than a year ago, the American Geophysical Union named a panel of
six climate experts to study all the available evidence on what has
been happening to temperatures over the past 150 years compared with
the global climate of the distant past.
Like other researchers, the panel concluded that Earth's average
temperature has risen by at least 1 degree Fahrenheit since the
Industrial Revolution began. Although the scientists cannot tell how
much of that increase is due to human activity, it is certainly
``unusual in the context of the past few centuries,'' the AGU leaders
declared in a public statement.
Only a few scientists continue to insist that any current increase in
global temperatures is primarily due to natural fluctuations, but the
geophysicists maintained that no natural phenomenon can compare to the
burning of fossil fuels as a cause.
APOLITICAL PANEL
The AGU never injects itself into political controversies, and the
organization did not recommend solutions to the global warming
problem. Nor did its leaders comment on the Clinton administration's
commitment to the international agreement to curb global warming
negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, two years ago. The agreement would pledge
industrial nations to cut back greenhouse gas emissions sharply over
the next dozen years, and Congress has yet to support it.
The most the AGU leaders would do yesterday was to warn that rising
temperatures could disrupt regional economies and lives as the globe
warms, while declaring that the warming problem ``provides a
compelling basis for legitimate public concern over future global and
regional-scale changes resulting from increased concentrations of
greenhouse gases.''
``It is important that public debate take into account the extent of
scientific knowledge and the uncertainties,'' the AGU statement said,
and it urged scientists around the world to pursue both research and
policy discussions on coping with the complex issues that global
warming raises.
c1999 San Francisco Chronicle Page A3
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Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager
Center for Integrated Ag Systems
UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences
Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020
http://www.wisc.edu/cias/
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Dennis: Anarcho-syndicalism is a way of *preserving* freedom!
His Wife: Oh, Dennis, *forget* about freedom! We 'aven't got enough mud!
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