Global warming to devastate Europe first

[Scro]

European winters will disappear by 2080 and extreme weather will become more common unless global warming across the continent is slowed, warns a major new report.

Europe is warming more quickly than the rest of the world with potentially devastating consequences, including more frequent heatwaves, flooding, rising sea levels and melting glaciers, says the European Environment Agency (EEA) document, launched on Wednesday.

The changes are happening at such a pace that Europeans must put in place strategies to adapt to an unfamiliar climate, the researchers write, although they stress the importance of the Kyoto Protocol in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“Europe has to continue to lead worldwide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but this report also underlines that strategies are needed at European, regional, national and local level to adapt to climate change,” says Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the EEA, based in Denmark. “This is a phenomenon that will considerably affect our societies and environments for decades and centuries to come,”

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996302

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Bush will be condemned by history as last world leader pro-CO2

Bush will be cursed by generations ahead as the last world leader to deny Global Climate Change and its relation to human CO2 generation.

[Briar]

2. Surely Bush is just doing his job

and putting American interests first. Why damage the American economy when it is Europe which will suffer most, that's what he and his supporters will argue.

[Jim Sagle]

4. And besides, Old Yurp DESERVES it! Yee haw!!!!!!!!

:puke:

[depakid]

3. Of course, Europe could also be besieged by another ice age

...if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age -- in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset -- and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.

Here's how it works.

If you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?

It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The Great Conveyor Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.


http://www.alternet.org/story/17711

[bluestateguy]

5. Well, then they're just getting what they deserve!

Had they loyally supported us in the war in Iraq this never would have happened!