This is the page that contains the most important scientific updates.

Here's a news list and valuable references from Ross Gelbspan's The Heat Is Online, which follows his groundbreaking book, The Heat Is On. His most recent book, Boiling Point is most essential reading.

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Published on Jume 16, 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Climate Experts Urge Immediate Action to Offset Impact of Global Warming

Governments and consumers in the United States and worldwide should take immediate steps to reduce the threat of global warming and to prepare for a future in which coastal flooding, reduced crop yields and elevated rates of climate-related illness are all but certain, top U.S. scientists said Tuesday.

At a meeting organized by AAAS and its journal, Science, the climate researchers argued that while some policy experts and sectors of the public dispute the risk, there is in fact no cause for doubt: The world is significantly warmer today than it was a century ago--and it's getting warmer. Without action now, they warned, the impact could be devastating.

Full story at <http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2004/0616climate.shtml>

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Published on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 by Reuters

Insurer Warns of Global Warming Catastrophe
by Thomas Atkins

GENEVA - The world's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, warned on Wednesday that the costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making.

Full story at <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0303-07.htm>

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Published on Wednesday, August 6, 2003 by the Guardian/UK

Global Warming May Be Speeding Up, Fears Scientist

Alarm at "unusual" heat waves across northern hemisphere
by John Vidal

One of Europe's leading scientists yesterday raised the possibility that the extreme heat wave now settled over at least 30 countries in the northern hemisphere could signal that man-made climate change is accelerating.

The present heat wave across the northern hemisphere is worrying. There is the small probability that man-made climate change is proceeding much faster and stronger than expected,

said Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief scientific adviser to the German government and now head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall center. Schellnhuber said "the parching heat experienced now [could be consistent] with a worst-case scenario [of global warming] that nobody wants to come true." He warned that several months' research would be needed to analyze data from around the world before scientists could say why the heat waves are so intense this year.

"What we are seeing is absolutely unusual," said Prof Schellnhuber,

We know that global warming is proceeding apace, but most of us were thinking that in 20-30 years time we would be seeing hot spells [like this]. But it's happening now. Clearly extreme weather events will increase.

Other climate scientists across Europe suggested the present heat wave was perhaps the most intense experienced and linked to global warming.

We've not seen such an extended period of dry weather [in Europe] since records began...

Full story at <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0806-01.htm>

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Greenland Ice-Melt "Speeding Up"
By David Shukman, July 28, 2004, BBC environment and science correspondent in Greenland

In 2001 NASA scientists published a major study based on observations by satellite and aircraft. It concluded that the margins of the Greenland ice sheet were dropping in height at a rate of roughly one meter a year. Now, amid some of the most hostile conditions anywhere on the planet, Carl Boggild and his team have recorded falls as dramatic as 10 meters a year -- in places the ice is dropping at a rate of one meter a month.

Full story at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3922579.stm>

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Published on Sunday, March 28, 2004 by the lndependent/UK

Global Warming Spirals Upwards
by Geoffrey Lean

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control.

Measurements by US government scientists show that concentrations of the gas, the main cause of the climate change, rose by a record amount over the past 12 months. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, marking an unprecedented triennial surge.

Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear that it could show the first signs that global warming is feeding on itself ...

Full story at <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0328-08.htm>

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Published on Thursday, May 6, 2004 by the <Guardian/UK >

Scientists Claim New Evidence of Warming
by Matthew Taylor

Scientists are claiming to have found compelling new evidence for global warming, finally demolishing the argument of skeptics who have denied the phenomenon is real.

Full story at <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0506-08.htm>

States Split With Bush on Emissions

by CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent, Thu Dec 16, 8:17 PM ET

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Two sets of Americans have come here to talk global warming: the United States, opposed to controls on carbon emissions, and a bloc of united states, from Maine to Delaware, that plan to impose them.

Regional Initiatives

Published November 7, 2004 by the Wilmington News Journal

Out To Sea On Climate Change
by E. E. Jaffe

North polar sea ice has decreased by 3 percent per decade. The extent of tundra, which covers 24 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere, has decreased by 15 percent since 1970. During the past few decades temperature has risen faster in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth.

These changes are not the consequence of natural variability. They point to enormous changes by 2100 -- unless mankind changes course. With the increase in temperature some glaciers began melting. Over the next few centuries water could rise up to five or six meters if much of Greenland melts. Even if one assumes that Greenland and Antarctica remain stable over this century, sea levels are predicted to rise 0.2 to 0.5 meters. A large portion of the world's population lives only a few meters above sea level. In India, for example, a 0.88 meter rise in sea level would generate 20 million to 60 million refugees. Much of South Florida is situated only one meter above sea level. If the predicted melting of ice in Greenland materializes, it could cause tragedies in many parts of the world by mid-century.

Full story at <Out to sea>

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Published October 30, 2004 by the New York Times

Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming, Survey Finds

A comprehensive four-year study of warming in the Arctic shows that heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks around the world are contributing to profound environmental changes, including sharp retreats of glaciers and sea ice, thawing of permafrost and shifts in the weather, the oceans and the atmosphere.

The report concludes that the consequences of the fast-paced Arctic warming will be global. In particular, the accelerated melting of Greenland's two-mile-high sheets of ice will cause sea levels to rise around the world.

Full story at <Big Arctic Perils>

1. Remember in 2001 when Bush announced he would pull the USA out of the Kyoto negotiations, and that he would ask the National Academies for a report on Global Warming? This is the report, and it basically says, "It is real, it is bad, get with the program!" You have to know some of the background to get the full impact, but it is pretty clear anyway.

   Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (2001)
   PDF: <http://books.nap.edu/books/0309075742/html/>

2. The scientific community has gotten pretty excited in the last few years about the prospect of "abrupt climate change." The idea is that we are pushing the earth's systems so unnaturally hard that instead of a steady warming, we may well topple everything and get the whole planet, as my Daddy would say, "all cattywhompused."

   An Abrubt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States Security,
   Schwartz and Randall, October 2003 (PDF file)

   Environment and Sustainability articles by the Global Business Network

   Report in Brief. Abrubt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (2004)
   PDF: <http://www.nap.edu/html/climatechange-brief/abruptclimatechange-brief.pdf>

   The report on the National Acadamies of Science site

   Google cached version

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Published on Sunday, December 21, 2003 by the Boston Globe

A real solution to climate change has the potential to begin to mend a fractured world.

"Rewiring" The World's Energy
by Ross Gelbspan

CLIMATE CHANGE isn't just another issue in this complicated world of proliferating issues. It's the issue that -- unchecked -- will swamp all others. Unfortunately, the urgency of the climate crisis is overwhelmed by competition from other major problems. We are under attack from terrorists. We are apprehensive about the aftermath of the Iraq war. Our trick-or-treat economy is as unnerving to investors as it is cruel to workers. These diverse challenges may be susceptible to a common solution -- a rapid worldwide transition to clean energy.

Full story at <http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1221-06.htm>

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The Economist

Why climate change could mean higher insurance premiums

Awful weather we're having
Sep 30th 2004

Whatever the cause, the world's insurers are counting the cost of more volatile weather. "Higher variability means more uncertainty means normally a higher price," says David Bresch of Swiss Re.

If insurers and reinsurers ever feel confident enough of climate change to act, premiums and deductibles are likely to rise.

Climate change could also increase demand for catastrophe ("cat") bonds. These are a form of securitised risk, offered by insurers or reinsurers to limit their exposures. The investor receives a high rate of return (often above 10%) in exchange for the risk of losing his principal if losses from a hurricane, windstorm or terrorist attack exceed a certain level. (So severe must the disaster be that even the recent storms have not been strong enough to trigger payouts, though prices on the bonds have wobbled.) Such instruments are getting more popular, with hedge funds among the most eager investors: cat-bond issues totalled $1.7 billion in 2003, up 42% from 2002...

Governments are...instrumental in prevention: insurers rely on them to curb carbon emissions, fund climate-change research and build protections such as flood defences. Perhaps governments and insurers together could gently suggest to citizens that building new houses in flood- or hurricane-watch areas is not always the best idea.

More at <Govt. is good for business??? We're shocked, shocked!>

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The New York Times

NASA Expert Criticizes Bush on Global Warming Policy

A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming plans to criticize the administration's approach to the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and say that a senior administration official told him last year not to discuss dangerous consequences of rising temperatures.

Expert: Bush Hides Global Warming Evidence

More at "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now"...Dr. Hansen rose to prominence when, after testifying at a Senate hearing in the record-warm summer of 1988, he said, "It is time to stop waffling so much and say the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."

IEA Outlook: Energy Demand Cut Of 10% By 2030 Achievable

LONDON -- The International Energy Agency offered a prescription Tuesday for an alternative energy policy to cut pollution, reduce poverty and limit energy dependence.

"The worst case is not inevitable"

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