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Thursday, July 08, 2010

Flooding, storms, disease, droughts, species extinctions, and ocean acidification

The following is a warning by Dennis Bushnell who is the chief scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, about the hazard of global warming, which as we are aware, is the prime threat to humanity. The more I think about it the more I am disturbed.

"The additional effects of these feedbacks increase the projections from a 4°C–6°C temperature rise by 2100 to a 10°C–12°C rise, according to some estimates. At those temperatures, beyond 2100, essentially all the ice would melt and the ocean would rise by as much as 75 meters, flooding the homes of one-third of the global population.

"Between now and then, ocean methane hydrate release could cause major tidal waves, and glacier melting could affect major rivers upon which a large percentage of the population depends. We'll see increases in flooding, storms, disease, droughts, species extinctions, ocean acidification, and a litany of other impacts, all as a consequence of man-made climate change. Arctic ice melting, CO2 increases, and ocean warming are all occurring much faster than previous IPCC forecasts, so, as dire as the forecasts sound, they're actually conservative."

"Flooding, storms, disease, droughts, species extinctions, ocean acidification," of course, I wouldn't be around to see all this happening but I wonder what anyone is doing to save ourselves and our grandchildren. And all this about to happen in the next century, i.e., before 2100, which means the time my grandchildren would be living on the earth, god willing.

Now, who would want his/her grandchild/ren to go through such an ordeal? The environment is precious, nurture it, protect it, savour it.

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