What should be done to eliminate global warming?

Warming report puts Arctic on alert.
Alaska anticipates more rain, erosion .

February 7, 2007
BY TOM KIZZIA
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The latest international scientific report on global warming, released last week in Paris, is focusing new attention on changes to the Arctic, including a sharp increase projected for rain and snowfall in Alaska.

Unlike the previous international summary report, issued in 2001, this one repeatedly mentions the Arctic, according to two of Alaska's leading climate scientists. The northern latitudes have been heating up faster than anywhere else and are already showing significant signs of change.

University researchers in Fairbanks and Anchorage said last week that the world's scientific community is squarely behind the new report, which concludes there is no longer reasonable doubt that rising temperatures and sea levels are due to human activity. The United Nations-backed report says it is nearly certain -- with a confidence level of more than 90% -- that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by humans have been the main cause of rising temperatures in the last half century.

"The smoking gun is now there in terms of human contribution," said John Walsh, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "It's going to be received as a call for action in the United States."

But Alaska's best-known climate-change skeptic, Syun Akasofu of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said he's still not convinced. He said the 21-page summary report released Friday does not appear to allow sufficiently for natural fluctuations in climate.

"There is no question that climate change is occurring in the Arctic. The question is what's causing this," said Akasofu, an aurora scientist who retired last week as director of the university's International Arctic Research Center. He said scientists must do a better job teasing out natural and regional heating trends and subtracting these effects from the overall measured changes.

Walsh disagreed. He said the detailed reports underlying Friday's release will spell out how natural variability has already been allowed for. One table released Friday showed solar radiation as only a minor contributor compared with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases.

The new report is a product of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, drawing on work from hundreds of scientists from 113 countries. It represents the fourth such assessment of scientific thinking on the issue since 1990, when scientists were still trying to decide whether the warming trend was real.

Among the impacts in Alaska, which the scientists said would be detailed in the report to come: shrinking glaciers, receding sea ice and snow cover, melting permafrost and advancing tree lines. One anticipated impact that has not received much attention yet is an increase in precipitation in Alaska of 15% to 25%, Walsh said. That could mean more erosion and more frequent thunderstorms in interior Alaska, he said.

"Stream flow runoff may have perhaps more consequences than temperature change in an area like Alaska," Walsh said.

Other climate issues affecting the polar regions include accelerated loss of sea ice, harm to polar bears and other marine mammals, and increasing ultraviolet radiation through an Arctic ozone hole, Walsh said.

Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Answer: Elimination of humans would stop all human activity... and global warming.