Climate Change Experts Despair Over US Attitude

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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0615-11.htm

Climate Change Experts Despair Over US Attitude
by Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON - Climate change experts said on Tuesday they are frustrated the U.S. government and the public are not taking the risk of global warming seriously.

They said even as sea levels rise and crop yields fall, officials argue over whether climate change is real and Americans continue to drive fuel-guzzling SUVs.

"There is going to be large change," said atmospheric scientist David Battisti of the University of Washington in Seattle. "The risks are very large."

The group met at the American Association for the Advancement of Science to try to drive home the message that climate change is already under way.

"You hope that somehow people will understand that we have got to do something now," Joyce Penner, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. "Some people get it -- some people are driving hybrids. But there is a problem with the American public."


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