124 Years of Failed Climate
and Environmental Predictions
Is our climate changing?
The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years,
culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout
the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older
inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were
young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in
this last decade. - New York
Times June 23, 1890
The question is again being
discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the
advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the
fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial
frost and snow of the polar regions -
New York Times - February 24, 1895
The Oceanographic
observations have, however, been even more interesting. Ice conditions were
exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never been noted. The expedition all
but established a record….Journal of the
Royal Meteorological Society - January 1905
“Fifth ice age is on the
way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” – Los Angles Times October 23, 1912
The Arctic ocean is warming
up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the
water too hot.... Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, have declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto
unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone... Great masses of ice have been
replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many
points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no
white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and
smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in
the old seal fishing grounds. - Washington
Post 11/2/1922
Scientist says Arctic ice
will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory
of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.”
He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and
warned that North America would disappear as far south as
the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped
out.” – Chicago Tribune August 9,
1923
The discoveries of changes
in the sun's heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given
rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age - Time Magazine 9/10/1923
America in longest warm
spell since 1776; temperature line records a 25 year rise - New York Times 3/27/1933
“Gaffers who claim that
winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weather men have no
doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” – Time Magazine Jan. 2 1939
More than eighteen years of
observing the fluctuations of Arctic weather conditions in the
fifty-eight Soviet scientific stations in the Far North....lead Russian
meteorologists to a forecast of warmer winters and hotter summers for the
North and South Poles. They believe that the earth is entering a new cycle
of warmer weather. A series of curious discoveries have been
announced in support of this theory. It has been noted that year
by year, for the past two decades, the fringe of the Polar ice pack
has been creeping northward in the Barents Sea. As compared with the
year 1900, the total ice surface of this body of water has decreased
by twenty per cent. Various expeditions have discovered that
warmth-loving species of fish have migrated in great shoals to
waters farther north than they had ever been seen before..Our
generation is living in a period when remarkable changes are
taking place almost everywhere throughout the world. - Examiner April 12, 1939
A mysterious warming of the
climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a "serious
international problem," - New York
Times - May 30, 1947
Greenland's polar climate
has moderated so consistently that communities of hunters have evolved into
fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been
replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area's southern waters. - New York Times August 29, 1954
After a week of discussions
on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several
continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it
is getting colder. - New York Times
- January 30, 1961
Like an outrigger canoe
riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on
the down-slope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward
another Ice Age. - Los Angeles
Times December 23, 1962
Col. Bernt Balchen,
polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists
proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North
Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two. – New York Times - February 20, 1969
The United States and the
Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the
Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have
recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover
contributes to the onset of ice ages. – New
York Times - July 18, 1970
A comparison of climatic
data for the eastern United States from the 1830's and 1840's with the
currently valid climatic normals indicates a distinctly cooler and, in some
areas, wetter climate in the first half of the last century. The recently
appearing trend to cooler conditions noticed here and elsewhere could be
indicative of a return to the climatic character of those earlier years. - Monthly Weather review Feb. 1968
The battle to feed humanity
is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of
people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked
upon now. -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)
It is now pretty clearly
agreed that the CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This
could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees
Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye
New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.- - Presidential adviser Daniel Moynihan 1969
By 1985, air pollution will
have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half..." Life magazine, January 1970
Get a good grip on your
long johns, cold weather haters--the worst may be yet to come. That's the
long-long-range weather forecast being given out by "climatologists."
the people who study very long-term world weather trends…. Washington Post January 11, 1970
Because of increased dust,
cloud cover and water vapor "...the planet will cool, the water vapor will
fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born," Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish - Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
"Civilization will end
within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing
mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this
nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," - Barry Commoner Washington University Earth
Day 1970
"(By 1995) somewhere between
75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970
“By the year 2000...the
entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia,
will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970
“In the next 50 years fine
dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will
screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could
fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could
be sufficient to trigger an ice age." –Washington Post - July 9, 1971
"By the year 2000 the
United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited
by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even
money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Paul Ehrlich 1971
New Ice Age Coming---It's
Already Getting Colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future,
a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan,
the Dakotas and the Russian steppes…..Los
Angles Times Oct 24, 1971
"It is projected that
man's potential to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold in the next 50 years. If
this increased rate of injection... should raise the present background opacity
by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by
as much as 3.5°C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth,
sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger
an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced
fossil fuels as a means of energy production" - Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" Steven
Schneider Science July 1971
A new glacial insolation
regime, expected to last 8000 years, began just recently. Mean global
temperatures may eventually drop about 1oC in the next hundred
years. Insolation and Glacials
-Boreas March 1972
Arctic specialist Bernt
Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar
ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000. - Los Angles Times - May 16, 1972
The climatic warming trend
since the 1880s, which seems to have been global in extent and was manifested
by an upward trend in mean annual (and particularly mean winter) temperatures,
seems to have given way since the 1940s to a cooling trend, which is most
marked in higher latitudes. -Recent Climatic Change and Increased
Glacierization in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Nature. June 1972
For the past 25 to 30 years
the Earth has been getting progressively cooler again. Around 1960 the cooling
was particularly sharp. And there is by now widespread evidence of a
corresponding reverse in the ranges of birds and fish and the success of crops
and forest trees near the poleward and altitudinal limits. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Courier Aug-Sep 1973
"There is very important climatic change (Global Cooling) going on right
now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest. It is something that,
if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a
billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic
way.” – Fortune Magazine February 1974
"A review of selected
literature on latitudinal climatic shifts and atmosphere-ocean interaction
suggests some similarities between the patterns of climate in the 1960s and the
climate of the Little Ice Age". - Climate of the American tropics and
subtropics in the 1960s and possible comparisons with climatic variations of
the last millennium - Quaternary Research June 1974 *Quaternary Research June 1974
General agreement that the
present warm epoch has reached its final phase, and that disregarding possible
man-made effects - the natural end of this interglacial is "undoubtedly
near". - Background to a geophysical model of the initiation of the next
glaciation -Quaternary Research Dec 1974
“Climatological Cassandras are
becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are
studying may be the harbinger of another ice age” – Time Magazine June 24, 1974
"The western world's
leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global
climatic change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable
source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic
era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth's
climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850) - an era of
drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world"... Leaders in
climatology and economics are in agreement that a climate change is taking
place and that it has already caused major economic problems throughout the
world. As it become apparent to the nations around the world that the current
trend is indeed a long term reality, new alignments will be made among nations
to insure a secure supply of food resources. Assessing the impact of climate
change on major nations will in the future, occupy a major portion of the
Intelligence Community's assets. Central Intelligence Agency Report - "A study of Climatological Research as
it Pertains to Intelligence Problems" - August 1974
A number of climatologists, whose job it is to keep an eye on long-term weather
changes, have lately been predicting deterioration of the benign climate to
which we have grown accustomed….Various climatologists issued a statement that
“the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic
experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade,” If
policy makers do not account for this oncoming doom, “mass deaths by starvation
and probably in anarchy and violence” will result. New York Times - December 29, 1974
Regardless of long term
trends, such as the return of an Ice Age, unsettled weather conditions now
appear more likely than those of the abnormally favorable period which ended in
1972. This possibility and its implications must be considered in planning and
determining national and world food policies. There is an urgent need for better
understanding and utilization of information on weather variability and
climatic change in this context.– Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society - October 10, 1975
A RECENT flurry of papers
has provided further evidence for the belief that the Earth is cooling. There
now seems little doubt that changes over the past few years are more than a
minor statistical fluctuation – Nature
- March
6, 1975
Scientists, these seemingly
disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the
world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of
extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.
Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as
well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are
almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural
productivity for the rest of the century. – The Cooling World Newsweek, April 28, 1975
The regions that would be
most severely affected by a continuation of the cooling trend to the year 2000
would be the higher latitudes (above 50 degrees) where spring wheat is grown
and the warm band below 30 degrees latitude where rice is the principal grain
crop.- Weather Variability, Climatic Change, and Grain Production - Science May 9, 1975
“Scientist ponder why
World’s Climate is changing; a major cooling is considered to be inevitable
– New York Times May 21,
1975
The trend of world
temperature in this century appears to be directly related to the trends of
atmospheric carbon dioxide content and atmospheric turbidity (dustiness). Both
are believed by various scholars to be related to human activities. Since 1940,
the effect of the rapid rise of atmospheric turbidity appears to have exceeded
the effect of rising carbon dioxide, resulting in a rapid downward trend of
temperature. There is no indication that these trends will be reversed, and
there is some reason to believe that man-made pollution will have an increased
effect in the future. - The Changing
Global Environment 1975
This cooling has already
killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is
taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could
all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell
Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
An international team of
specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in
sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
- New York Times - January 5, 1978
Move Where (to escape the
cold)? The Brutal Buffalo (NY) winter might be common all over the United
States. Climate experts believe the next Ice Age is on its way. According to
recent evidence, it could come sooner than anyone expected. - In Search of - "The Coming Ice Age" 1978
One of the questions
that nags at climatologists asks when and how fast a new ice age
might descend. A Belgian scientist suggests this could happen sooner and
swifter than you might think. - Christian
Science Monitor - Nov 14, 1979
Evidence
has been presented and discussed to show a cooling trend over the Northern
Hemisphere since around 1940, amounting to over 0.5°C, due primarily to cooling
at mid- and high latitudes - Present Climatic Cooling and a Proposed
Causative Mechanism - Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society - November 1980
A global warming trend
could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said...
Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of
shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years - San Jose Mercury News - June 11, 1986
Greenhouse Effect Culprit
May Be Family Car; New Ice Age by 1995?...As the tropical oceans heat up (due
to increased greenhouse gases), more of their moisture is evaporated to form
clouds. The increasing pole-tropic wind systems move some of these additional
clouds toward the poles, resulting in increased winter rainfall, longer and
colder winters and the gradual buildup of the polar ice sheets. This phenomenon
has come to be widely recognized by climatologists in recent years. What most
of them do not recognize is that this process may be the engine that drives the
100,000-year cycle of major ice ages, for which there is no other plausible
explanation....we may be less than seven years away, and our climate may
continue to deteriorate rapidly until life on earth becomes all but
unsupportable.... New York Times - Larry
Ephron , Director of the Institute for a Future - July 15, 1988
[In New York City by 2008]
The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.
And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high
winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will
change. There will be more police cars. Why? Well, you know what happens to
crime when the heat goes up... Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather
increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get
more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts
can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by
request only.” - James Hansen testimony
before Congress in June 1988
STUDY FORESEES 86 NEW POWER
PLANTS TO COOL U.S. WHEN GLOBE GETS HOTTER: Global warming could force
Americans to build 86 more power plants -- at a cost of $110 billion -- to keep
all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says...Using
computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two
degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86
new midsize power plants - Associated
Press May 15, 1989
U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS
DISASTER SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP - entire
nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global
warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures
would create an exodus of "eco-refugees," threatening political
chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment
Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the
greenhouse effect - Associated Press
June 30, 1989
'New York will probably be
like Florida 15 years from now,' - St.
Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 17, 1989
Some predictions for the
next decade (1990's) are not difficult to make... Americans may see the '80s
migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest
in cooler climates. - Dallas Morning
News December 5th 1989
"(By) 1995, the
greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and
Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots...
"(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a
continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on
interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers... "The
Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico
seeking work as field hands". - Michael
Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund - "Dead Heat" 1990
Giant sand dunes may turn
Plains to desert - Huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado's Front Range
may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America's
rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes
discovered in NASA satellite photos are expected to re- emerge over the next 20
to 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected
"greenhouse effect," scientists believe. -Denver Post April 18, 1990
By 2000, British and
American oil will have diminished to a trickle......Ozone depletion and global
warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary
reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the
ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North's greater
military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change
the way we live.....At present rates of exploitation there may be no rain forest
left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect
may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years. - 5000 Days to Save the Planet - Edward Goldsmith 1991
''I think we're in trouble.
When you realize how little time we have left - we are now given not 10 years
to save the rain-forests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely
be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.'' - ABC - The Miracle Planet April 22, 1990
The planet could face an
"ecological and agricultural catastrophe" by the next decade if
global warming trends continue - Carl
Sagan - Buffalo News Oct. 15, 1990
Most of the great
environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next
century it will be too late. -- Thomas
E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution “Real Goods Alternative Energy Sourcebook,”
Seventh Edition: February 1993
Today (in 1996) 25 million
environmental refugees roam the globe, more than those pushed out for political,
economic, or religious reasons. By 2010, this number will grow tenfold to 200
million. - The Heat is On -The
High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate - Ross Gelbspan -
1996
"It appears that we
have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more
frequent, and they're going to become more intense and in a few years, or a
decade or so, we'll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool
water periods for a year or two, we'll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will
become the norm. And you'll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months,
lasts 18 years," he said. - BBC
November 7, 1997
One of the world's leading
climate experts warned of an underestimated threat posed by the buildup of
greenhouse gases ' an abrupt collapse of the ocean's prevailing circulation
system that could send temperatures across Europe plummeting in a span of 10
years. If that system shut down today, winter temperatures in the North
Atlantic region would fall by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit within 10 years.
Dublin would acquire the climate of Spitsbergen, 600 miles north of the Arctic
Circle. "The consequences could be devastating," said Wallace S.
Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia
University's - Science Magazine Dec 1,
1997
Scientists are warning that
some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global
warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could
lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people. - The Birmingham Post (England) July 26, 1999
A report last week claimed
that within a decade, the disease (Malaria) will be common again on the Spanish
coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed
world. - The Guardian September 11, 1999
“But it does not take
a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too
young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures
of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the
delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.” - Dr. Michael
Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund New York Times - January 2000
“We are beginning to
approximate the kind of warming you should see in the winter season.” - Star
News, Mike Changery, National Climatic
Data Center, Mar 11 2000
Britain's winter ends
tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is
starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the
excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a
rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which
scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer
white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. - Charles Onians -UK Independent Mar 20, 2000
Within a few years winter
snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going
to know what snow is," Dr David Viner, Senior research scientist at the
climatic research unit (CRU) of the University
of East Anglia - Mar 20, 2000
“Good bye winter. Never
again snow?” Spiegel, 1 April 2000
Officials with the Panama
Canal Authority, managers of the locks and reservoirs since the United States
relinquished control of the canal in 1999, warn that global warming, increased
shipping traffic and bigger seagoing vessels could cripple the canal's capacity
to operate within a decade. CNN November
1, 2000
Arctic meltdown - There
will be anarchy as northern seas open up to shipping. THE Arctic ice cap is
melting at a rate that could allow routine commercial shipping through the far
north in a decade and open up new fisheries...But in 10 years' time, if melting
patterns change as predicted, the North-West Passage could be open to ordinary
shipping for a month each summer. And the Northern Sea Route across the top of
Russia could allow shipping for at least two months a year in as little as five
years...The resulting boom in shipping could lead to conflicts, as nations try
to enforce fisheries rules, prevent smuggling and piracy, and protect the
Arctic environment from oil spills..Peter Wadhams of the Scott Polar Research
Institute in Cambridge agrees that the Arctic could soon open up. "Within
a decade we can expect regular summer trade there," he predicts. New Scietist Feb. 27, 2001
In ten years time, most of
the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu's nine islands in the South Pacific
Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels, CNN Mar 29, 2001
(1) global warming will
cause milder winters and (2) global warming will cause a decline in heavy
snowstorm events. IPCC 2001 Third
Assessment Report
"Globally, 2002 is likely to be warmer
than 2001 - it may even break the record set in 1998. - Daily Mirror August 2, 2002
In the North Atlantic, an
increasing amount of fresh water, perhaps coming from melting ice in the
Arctic, has been accumulating and lowering the salinity of the ocean for the
past 30 years...Oceanographers presented new evidence that this northern
freshwater buildup may be approaching the threshold where it could alter
currents in a way that would cause an abrupt drop in average winter
temperatures of about 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and
10 degrees in the Northeast. This change could happen within a decade and
persist for hundreds of years. - Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute Sep 6, 2002
Next year(2003)may be
warmest recorded: Global temperatures in 2003 are expected to exceed
those in 1998 - the hottest year to date
- Telegraph UK- December
30, 2002
By 2005 the climatic impact
of the shift is felt more intensely in certain regions around the world.
More severe storms and typhoons bring about higher storm surges and floods in
low-lying islands such as Tarawa and Tuvalu (near New Zealand). In 2007, a
particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the
Netherlands making a few key coastal cities such as The Hague unlivable.
Failures of the delta island levees in the Sacramento River region in the
Central Valley of California creates an inland sea and disrupts the aqueduct
system transporting water from northern to southern California because salt
water can no longer be kept out of the area during the dry season. Melting
along the Himalayan glaciers accelerates, causing some Tibetan people to
relocate. Floating ice in the northern polar seas, which had already lost 40%
of its mass from 1970 to 2003, is mostly gone during summer by 2010. As glacial
ice melts, sea levels rise and as wintertime sea extent decreases, ocean waves
increase in intensity, damaging coastal cities. Additionally millions of people
are put at risk of flooding around the globe (roughly 4 times 2003 levels), and
fisheries are disrupted as water temperature changes cause fish to migrate to
new locations and habitats, increasing tensions over fishing rights. - An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its
Implications for United States National Security - October 2003
The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of
senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and
it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report
indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached. - Michael McCarthy - Environment Editor UK
Independent - 1/24/05
(The) extra energy,
together with a weak El Nino, is expected to make 2005 warmer than 2003 and
2004 and perhaps even warmer than 1998 - Reuters
February 11, 2005
Environmental refugees to
top 50 million in 5 years --"There are well-founded fears that the number
of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as
the world experiences the effects of climate change and other phenomena,"
says UNU-EHS Director Janos Bogardi. - United
Nations University news release - October 11, 2005
NOAA announced its
predictions for the 2006 hurricane season, saying it expects an "above
normal" year with 13-16 named storms. Of these storms, the agency says it
expects four to be hurricanes of category 3 or above, double the
yearly average of prior seasons in recorded history. With experts calling the
coming hurricane season potentially worse than last year's, oil prices
have jumped 70 cents per barrel in New York and made similar leaps
elsewhere. Economists anticipate that demand for oil will rise sharply over the
summer, when as many as four major hurricanes could hit the United States. -- Seed Magazine 5/19/06
“The more than ‘unusually‘ warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the
winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every
year by 0.2°C” Michael Müller,
Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, Die Zeit, 15
Jan 2007
This year (2007) is likely
to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in
1998, - Science Daily Jan. 5,
2007
Very Active 2007 Hurricane
Season Predicted - The U.S. Atlantic basin will likely experience a very active
hurricane season, the Colorado State University forecast team announced today,
increasing its earlier prediction for the 2007 hurricane season. The team's
forecast now anticipates 17 named storms forming in the Atlantic basin between
June 1 and Nov. 30. Nine of the 17 storms are predicted to become hurricanes,
and of those nine, five are expected to develop into intense or major
hurricanes (Saffir/Simpson category 3-4-5) with sustained winds of 111 mph or
greater. – Science Daily April 3, 2007
Global warming is forecast
to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following
years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists
reported on Thursday. - Reuters Aug 9,
2007
"According to these
models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean
somewhere between 2010 and 2015". “And it’s probably going to happen even
faster than that,” Professor Louis
Fortier - Université Laval, Director ArcticNet - November 16, 2007
NASA climate scientist Jay
Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the
end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions. - National Geographic Dec. 12, 2007
Scientists in the US have
presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of
Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters
could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski
told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had
underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. "Our projection of 2013
for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in
2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School,
Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. "So given that fact, you can argue
that maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative." Professor
Maslowski's group, which includes co-workers at Nasa and the Institute of
Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), is well known for producing
models that are in advance of other teams. - BBC Dec. 12, 2007
Adelie Penguins Extinct in
a Decade in Some Areas? The mid-latitudes of the Antarctic Peninsula once
provided the perfect habitat for the penguins—but not anymore. "That
region has experienced the most rapid warming during winter on the
planet," said Bill Fraser, an ecologist with the Polar Oceans Research
Group in Sheridan, Montana. "The mid-winter temperatures are now around
10.8 degrees Fahrenheit [6 degrees Celsius] higher than they were 50 years
ago." If the trend continues, Fraser predicts that Adélie penguins will be
locally extinct within five to ten years. National
Geographic Dec. 28, 2007
Arctic warming has become
so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer (2008), report scientists
studying the effects of climate change in the field. "We're actually
projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time
[in history]," David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National
Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. -
National Geographic News June 20, 2008
World will warm faster than
predicted in next five years, study warns. New estimate based on the
forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is
expected to silence global warming sceptics - Guardian July 27, 2009
The world has less than
five years to get carbon emissions under control or runaway climate change will
become inevitable, the World Wildlife
Fund (WWF) has warned. - Oct
19, 2009
New computer modeling
suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as
2014, Al Gore said Monday at the U.N.
climate conference. Dec 14. 2009
“There is a possibility of
an ice-free Arctic Ocean for a short period in summer perhaps as early as 2015.
This would mean the disappearance of multi-year ice, as no sea ice would
survive the summer melt season….Arctic
Marine Shipping Assessment Report – 2009
Habibullo Abdussamatov,
head of space research at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg,
Russia, predicts that a new "Little Ice Age" could begin in just four
years. WND Heartland Institute's 4th International Conference on Climate Change May 10, 2010
“It could even be this year
or next year but not later than 2015, there won’t be any ice in the Arctic in
the summer,” he said, pulling out a battered laptop to show a diagram
explaining his calculations, which he calls “the Arctic death spiral”. - David
Vaughan Glaciologist & IPCC scientist - Financial Times Magazine Aug 8, 2012
Granted, when making
projections, it's good to have sophisticated models. I don't claim to have used
those, but I've got a good eye and by the looks of it, sea ice will be gone in
September 2014. -Sam Carana Arctic News
Sep 21, 2012
For the record—I do
not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in
human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean….” - Paul Beckwith Sierra Club – March 23, 2013
