A government climate-change report predicts increases in very high temperatures, which scientists say will have wide-ranging affects.
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WASHINGTON (ABP) — A new government study on climate change says the United States is already feeling effects of human-induced global warming.
A report released June 16 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program says global warming is "unequivocal and primarily human-induced." It says climate changes underway in the United States probably will grow, and how much depends on how policy makers respond.
"First and foremost, human-induced climate change is a reality, not only in remote polar regions and in small tropical islands, but every place around the country, in our own backyards," Jane Lubchenco, director of the office of science and technology policy at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a press conference releasing the report.
Lubchenco said climate change is real and is happening now. "It's not just a problem for the future," she said. "We're beginning to see its impacts in our daily lives. More than that, humans are responsible for the changes that we are seeing, and our actions now will determine the extent of future change and the severity of the impacts."
The study says climate-related changes observed globally and in the U.S. include increases in air and water temperatures, reduced frost days, increased frequency and intensity of heavy downpours, a rise in sea level, and reduced snow cover, glaciers, permafrost and sea ice.
Areas of Florida illustrated in red would be under water with a three-foot sea rise in sea level, which is predicted for this century, the report says.
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The study says climate changes are already affecting the nation's water supply, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems and human health and are expected to increase. Future climate change and its impacts, the report says, depend on choices made today.
"It's not too late to act," Lubchenco said. "Decisions made now will determine whether we get big changes or small ones."
The report explains the science of global warming, in which the Earth's climate depends on the functioning of a natural "greenhouse effect." The effect is the result of gases that trap the warmth from sun-heated air that rises from the planet's surface, reflecting much of the heat back toward the surface.
Without it, the report says, the average temperature at Earth's surface would be about 60 degrees colder. Greenhouse gases come from both natural and man-made sources, such as burning of carbon fuels and clearing of forests. But, the report concludes, human influences in the last 50 years, have increased the rate at which the atmosphere traps heat.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the report says, the United States has been the world's largest emitter of heat-trapping gases. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, America is responsible for about 28 percent of human-induced heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere today.
While China recently passed the United States in total annual greenhouse-gas emissions, per-capita emissions remain much higher in the United States.
Recently the British charity Christian Aid said rich countries risk wrecking important international talks on a climate agreement by failing to commit to dramatic curbs in greenhouse emissions or to recognize the level of funding needed to help poor countries cope with the impacts of global warming.
The group, whose members include the Baptist unions of Great Britain, Scotland and Wales, noted that there are only six months to go until a critical U.N. summit in Denmark on climate change. Christian Aid said rich countries still refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for causing climate change and instead shift the burden of paying for it on the rest of the world.
Without real progress on commitments by the rich world, Nelson Muffuh, Christian Aid's senior climate advocate, said negotiations aimed at reaching a climate-change deal by December will collapse.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.