Researchers Said It Was Clear That The World's Oceans Play A Major Role In Queuing Up Rapid Climate

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Researchers said it was clear that the world's oceans play a major role in queuing up rapid climate changes, but that thus far the mechanics of such changes were poorly understood.

"It's like being blindfolded and walking toward the edge of a cliff," said Wallace Broeker, a professor of environmental sciences at Columbia University. "We don't understand (the factors) so we don't really know what to look for."

Using ice cores drilled from glaciers and other ice sheets, the researchers have developed a model showing world temperatures' rising and falling with unsettling frequency over the past 110,000 years.

While some of the changes have been slow and steady, such as the end of the last Ice Age some 12,000 years ago, others have been swift Breitling Replica Watches and unexpected, such as the rapid warming of the North Atlantic from 1920 to 1930 and the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s.
The most drastic temperature changes—believed to be as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit over the space of just a few years—exceed any recorded ...
... in human history, researches said. This was not intended to alarm the public, but they hoped it would stimulate policy makers to prepare for the possibility of rapid temperature flux.

Greenhouse gases, emitted by fossil fuels such as oil and coal, have been linked by many researchers to a rise in global temperatures. A 1997 Kyoto Treaty on global warming sought to cut emissions of such gasses by developed nations, but the Bush Administration this year spurned the treaty, saying pollution controls would be too costly for the U.S. economy.

The NAS panel called for research to identify what it described as "no-regrets" measures that would cost relatively little and would be good policies regardless of the extent of environmental change. Such measures could include regulations to reduce damage to water, air and land, or slow climate change, or helping societies cope with abrupt climate change by developing new financial instruments such as weather derivatives and catastrophe bonds to reflect the risks, it said.

Societies have faced both gradual and abrupt climate changes for millennial and have learned to adapt through various mechanisms, such Breitling Bentley Replica as moving indoors, developing irrigation for crops, and migrating away from inhospitable regions. It is important not to be fatalistic about the threats posed by abrupt climate change.