Friday, July 21, 2006

What's coming

James Hansen, probably the most prominent climate change scientist still employed by the US government, is profiled in the MIT Technology Review. Very good article:
What's coming next? Carbon dioxide -- the number one greenhouse gas -- has much more power to affect Earth's temperature than the orbital changes do. And in just the past 150 years, humankind has boosted carbon dioxide concentrations by 32 percent. NASA planetary scientist Jim Hansen says that if we continue to increase greenhouse-gas emissions, temperatures will rise between 2 and 3 ÂșC this century, making Earth as warm as it was three million years ago, when seas were between 15 and 35 meters higher than they are today. His predictions bear weight partly because he can verify his methods: using geological records, he has calculated past temperatures, and his results closely match the measured temperatures shown here.
Very good article, talking about his history and present. Check it out.

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