Global Warming Controversy 1999 through 2001
"Greenhouse Effect", Ice Age Reversal, Climatic Changes, Ozone Layer.
The year 1999 through 2001
Ice Is Likely To Come Again, But When?
Nations fail to set plan to fight global warming
Global warming scare is fake science
Ocean study backs global warming theory
Giant iceberg breaks loose from Antarctica
NASA laser survey finds Greenland ice cap is melting, raising sea level
Report says warming threatens world habitats
Ozone layer's hole largest ever, started early this year
Panel: Global warming to get worse
With clock ticking, global climate talks debate U.S. positions
Global warming talks fail to reach accord
U.N. report issues darker view of global-warming consequences
Report warns of future risk of global warming
Global Warming Prediction Disputed
Faith-based effort tries to sway Bush on global warming
Annan: U.S. must act to curb global warming
Kyoto global warming treaty is 'fatally flawed,' Bush says


• 3/1/1999 - Ice Is Likely To Come Again, But When? by William K. Stevens, The New York Times
      Over the past million years, the earth has been locked in the deep cold of ice ages, the most recent of these glaciations, which lasted about 100,000 years and ended about 10,000 years ago, buried much of Europe and North America.    Since many scientist believe that global warming is partly caused by the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, might complicate the situation, and cause a new glaciation to begin at almost any time.    Lloyd Burckle, a paleo-oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and an expert on ancient climates claims new evidence promotes that the present warm period could last another 10,000 to 20,000 years or longer.    This was determined in the form of chemical tracers of past climates contained in deep-ocean sediments, where warm periods lasted for 30,000 years or more, and called a Stage II.
      James Kasting of Pennsylvania State University, an expert on geochemical processes and ancient climate, claims the average global temperature could rise 8 to 27 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 800 years or so.    Some scientist believe that if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, the average global temperature will rise by 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, with the best estimate of 3.5 degrees, over the next century.    By comparison, the average temperature has risen by 5 to 9 degrees since the depths of the last glaciation some 20,000 years ago.
      In general, scientist believe that climatic cycles are allowing less solar radiation to reach far northern latitudes in the summer, meaning less ice is melting each year as a result of the sun's direct action that melted 9,000 years ago: The die is cast for the next glaciation, but they assure us that the world will stay warm for 10,000 to 20,000 more years.
  
  
• 1/25/2000 - Nations fail to set plan to fight global warming - Delegates from U.S. and Europe criticize compromise proposal - by Emma Ross, Associated Press
      The Hague, Netherlands - Negotiators at environmental talks abandoned attempts to reach a detailed agreement on controlling global warming.    This was a retreat from the follow up on the details left open in Kyoto, Japan, three years ago when the nations agreed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas.    The two main negotiating blocs at the U.N. conference criticized a compromise proposal by conference chairman Jan Pronk, that tolerates a 3 percent increase in emissions by 2010.    Euorpean Union delegates claim the plan to break the deadlock over fundamental issues would allow countries too much leeway to avoid honoring gas reductions they committed to in Kyoto.    The United States, which said it considers the plan "unacceptably imbalanced."    French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, representing the European Union, said the plan would actually permit greenhouse gas emissions to increase.
      The United States, the world's leading polluter, Canada , Japan and Australia don't want any limits on creative ways to achieve compliance.    The United States proposed that nations should be given credits for existing agricultural and forest lands because they absorb the key greenhouse gas -- carbon dioxide - and thereby offset some of the emissions that scientists say are warming the atmosphere.
      Environmental organizations, such as Jennifer Morgan of World Wildlife Fund and Bill Hare of Greenpeace International, were resting all their hopes on the European Union getting these issues resolved.    German Environment Minister Juergen Tritin said the proposal is so watered down that it's weaker than the 1997 Kyoto treaty that set emission reduction targets for 180 countries.    Under the Kyoto Protocal, worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases must decline to 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012.
• 1/30/2000 - Global warming scare is fake science by Betsy Hart, Scripps Howard News Service
      The provisions of the Kyoto Treaty, which the U.S Senate refuses to ratify but which President Clinton is committed to enacting through backdoor methods, would both drastically reduce U.S. energy use and cost our economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year.    All because alarmist claim that the earth's temperature has risen this century and that the reason is the burning of fossil fuels.    The result will be melting icebergs flooding our coasts, severe droughts and heat in years ahead.    In 1998, more that 17,000 American scientists, including climatologists, oceanographers, biologists, and geophysicists, signed a petition declaring that there was no convincing evidence that human activities were significantly heating up the earth's climate, thus rejecting the Kyoto protocol.
• 3/24/2000 - Ocean study backs global warming theory - Water temperature shows significant rise over the past 40 years - The Washington Post.
      The temperature of the world's oceans has increased dramatically over the past four decades, according to a major study that adds new credibility to projections of increased global warming.    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spent years painstakingly piecing together millions of sea-water temperature records made by hundreds of independent observers worldwide over the past 50 years but never compiled into a single database.    Sydney Levitus, who heads NOAA's Ocean Climate Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md., claims the results make it clear that the oceans can store a lot of heat, and for 40 years have kept it away from the atmosphere.    This preceded increases in air temperature by a decade or so in the recent climate record, bolstering the case for additional global warming.
• 3/24/2000 - Giant iceberg breaks loose from Antarctica by The Associated Press.
      Washington - An iceberg about twice the size of Delaware has broken off from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and could drift into shipping lanes in the South Polar region.    The iceberg, detected by satellites, measures 183 miles by 22 miles (surface area 4,247 square miles) and is among the largest ever observed, according to the National Science Foundation, which coordinates American research at the South Pole.    Calving of the iceberg moved the boundary of the Ross Ice Shelf southward about 25 miles.
• 7/21/2000 - NASA laser survey finds Greenland ice cap is melting, raising sea level by The Associated Press.
      Washington - A warming climate is melting more than 50 billion tons of water a year from the Greenland ice sheet, and a study shows it's adding to a nine-inch global rise in seal level over the last century and increasing the risk of coastal flooding around the world.    William Krabill, head of a NASA aerial survey using laser light bouncing back to a receiver and Global Positioning Satellite system giving a measure of altitude, shows that more that 11 cubic miles of ice is disappearing from the ice sheet annually.
• 8/31/2000 - Report says warming threatens world habitats by The Associate Press.
      London - Global warming could transform a third of the world's plant and animal habitats by the end of the 21st century, threatening many species with rapid extinction.    Researchers for the World Wide Fund for Nature -- known as the World Wildlife Fund in the United States and Canada - singled out the Artic and northern latitudes are the most vulnerable to the changing climate.    They estimated 20 percent of the species there could die out due to shrinking habitat.    This tundra denuded of walrus and polar bear populations and a New England stripped of spruce and fir forests if the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere isn't reduced.    Many scientists believe that high concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere, driving up temperatures and changing weather patterns.    The northern latitudes of Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, where climate change is expected to occur fastest, could lose 70 percent of their habitat.
      The research results "make it undeniable that a major warming is affecting the Artic environment," said Michael Ledbetter of the National Science Foundation in Washington, which financed the study, written by 11 climatologist from five universities in the United States.
• 9/9/2000 - Ozone layer's hole largest ever, started early this year by Geir Moulson, The Associate Press.
      Geneva - Dr. Paul Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and scientists state that the hole in the ozone layer is now three times larger than the United States, or about 11 million square miles on Sept. 3, from a previous record of 10.5 million in 1998.    U.N. weather experts said the hole over the Antarctic is growing earlier in the year than usual.    This has caught atmospheric experts off-guard as to the long-term environmental impact of changes in the ozone layer.    Ozone protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, too much can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food chain.    Scientists say human-made chlorine compounds used in refrigerants, aerosol sprays, solvents, foam-blowing agents and bromine compounds used in firefighting halogens cuase most ozone depletion.    The Montreal Protocol committed countries to eliminating production and use of ozone-depleting substances, but it could be 20 years before ozone levels recover noticeably.
• 10/26/2000 - Panel: Global warming to get worse - Earlier fears fall far short of predictions, by H. Josef Herbert, The Associated Press.
      Washington - Since the last review in 1995, new evidence shows man-made pollution has "contributed substantially" to global warming over the last 50 years and the Earth is likely to get a lot hotter that previously predicted, a United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds.    The scientist, in revised estimates, conclude that if greenhouse emissions are not curtailed the Earth's average surface temperatures could be expected to increase from 2.7 to nearly 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.    It attributes the increase mainly to a reduced influence now expected to be played by sulfate releases from industry and power plants.    No solution is at hand since none of the major industrial countiries have yet ratified the Kyoto, Japan agreement of 1997 to reduce these levels.
• 11/24/2000 - With clock ticking, global climate talks debate U.S. positions by Jerome Socolovsky, The Associate Press.
      The Hague, Netherlands -- International negotiators at the U.N. climate conference are still at an impasse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the United States.    Conference chairman Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister, presented suggestions to bridge the gaps among the 180 nations in the talks.    This gap is the trans-Atlantic disputes over exemptions in emission cuts for industrialized countries, which release one-quarter of worldwide greenhouse gases, as stated by U.S. delegate Frank Loy.    With increasing evidence that the atmosphere is heating up, delegates are under pressure to reach an agreement.    Emissions of carbon dioxide must drop to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2010.    These emission levels have actually increased in the United States and many other countries.
      Proposals include an international market for trading emission quotas, cross-border industrial cleanup projects and so-called "sinks" -- the controversial idea.
      The United States, the world's leading polluter, has been advocating liberal use of sinks -- which constitute forests, farmland and other vegetation that soak up heat-retaining gases, at least temporarlily.
      Hurricanes, cyclones, floods and droughts have hardened positions of European countires and island nations struck by extreme weather.
• 11/26/2000 - Global warming talks fail to reach accord, U.S., Europeans disagree over role of forest 'sinks,' by Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times.
      The Hague, Netherlands -- Jan Pronk, the conference president just rescheduled for another session in May, 2001 as the talks broke down after all-night sessions.    From the outset it was conflicting agendas.    Poor countries sought billions of dollars to help them adapt to climate change.    Rich countries sought to blunt the impact of emission reductions on their economies by finding the least costly ways to cut warming gases, including planting forests as "sinks" to absorb carbon dioxide.
  
  
• 1/23/2001 - U.N. report issues darker view of global-warming consequences by Joe McDonald, The Associated Press.
      Shanghai, China -- A United Nations report states that the world's temperatures could rise by as much as 10.5 degrees over the next century, triggering droughts, floods and other disasters.    Robert T. Watson, chairman of the U.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an American who is chief science advisor to the World Bank, stated that the rise is sharply higher than the 2.5-5.5 degrees previously reported, and the new evidence is caused by industrial pollution.    Only a few countries such as Britain and Germany are on track to meet their target to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.    United States is the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, China is number 2.
• 2/19/2001 - Report warns of future risk of global warming by The Associated Press.
      Geneva -- The Geneva report, "Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," gives a regional breakdown of what may lie ahead.
  
  • North America: Food production could benefit from modest warming, but there will be strong regional effects like declines in Canada's praries and the U.S. Great Plains.    Rising sea levels could increase coastal erosion, flooding and lead to more storm surges, particularly in Florida and the Atlantic coast.    Diseases like malaria, dengue fever and lyme disease may expand their ranges and more heat-related deaths.
  • Small island states: A projected sea-level rise of two-tenths of an inch per year for the next 100 years will increase coastal erosion, damage to ecosystem, loss of land and dislocation of people.    Coral reefs will be damaged and fisheries harmed.    Tourism disrupted.
  • Latin America: Floods and droughts will become more frequent, and decrese important crop yields.    Subsistence farming in northeastern Brazil could be threatened.    Exposure to diseases such as malaria and cholera likely will increase.
• 2/24/2001 - Global Warming Prediction Disputed by James Bob Gresham, Paducah, KY.
      Science can be corrupted.    To find out if a scientist is biased, just find out who writes his paycheck.    Some of us remember when scientists and doctors were used years ago to support the safety of tobacco products.    Scientists go where the research grants are available.    Millions of dollars are made available for global warming research because of the current politically correct support.
• 4/8/2001 - Faith-based effort tries to sway Bush on global warming by Los Angeles Times.
      President Bush's decision to withdraw from an international climate-change treaty has galvanized an emerging green movement within the nation's churches and synagogues from 22 states.    Protest letters have been sent to the White House by the National Council of Churches and the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary.     Other letters were dispatched from the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs.
• 5/21/2001 - Annan: U.S. must act to curb global warming by The Associated Press.
      Medford, Mass. -- United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that action on global warming must be taken now, and he called on the United States to resume leadership on the issue.    Annan said, "But it is the leaders of the industralized nations who must show the way, especially on the questions of global warming."    Annan hoped that the United States would be present when Kyoto talks reconvene in July in Bonn, Germany.   
• 6/12/2001 - Kyoto global warming treaty is 'fatally flawed,' Bush says - More research is needed before taking action, he says - by Tom Raum, The Associated Press.
      Washington -- President Bush declared the Kyoto global warming protocol to be flawed and suggested more scientific research must be done before charting a new international course to combat the problem.    He stated that this treaty would damage the U.S. economy while exempting two of the world's biggest polluters, China and India.    On climate change, Bush acknowledged there was no longer any scientific doubt that Earth's surface temperature has been rising and that man made pollutants contribute by trapping heat, like a greenhouse.
      In Brussels, Margot Wallstroem, the European Union's environment commissioner, said she was confident that EU nations could meet the Kyoto emission targets "without impossing unreasonable costs on the European economy."
  
  

Last updated January 27, 2004.