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Published online 30 October 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1195
News: Briefing
Antarctica hit by climate change
Study shows human fingerprints on the polar thermostats.
In its landmark Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared in 2007 that human influence on climate "has been detected in every continent except Antarctica". Now a paper in Nature Geoscience says that our impact can be found even in the last wilderness1.
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Humankind has not found another planet on which humankind can live. Even though someday in the futrue we find a planet like earth, maybe it is almost impossible for humanity to reach it because of the too long distance. So protecting our environment is a serious matter. After all earth is our only home now. I don't think the future is bleak. As long as everyone undertakes the responsibility water will be clearer and air will be fresher and temperature will be more comfortable.
Lawrence Solomon, the Canadian environmentalist and anti-nuclear campaigner, sought to find well-regarded scientists who disagreed with the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hysteria promoted by Al Gore and the IPCC. The result was astonishing in that for all of the headline issues of the AGW hypothesis, he found dissenting scientists who were consistently the most accomplished and eminent people in their respective fields of expertise. The result was his book, The Deniers. I urge you to get a copy and read it through. Amongst other apocalyptic predictions of AGW, The Deniers discusses the rise of sea levels and the concomitant flooding of low-lying heavily populated areas. After analysing satellite data from 1992 to 2003, Prof. Duncan Wingham, director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency Cryosat Satellite Mission, found that there was a net growth of the Antarctic ice sheet of 5 mm per year. This includes the well-publicised melting on the Antarctic Peninsula that juts so far to the north. Since Antarctica contains about 90 percent of the world?s ice, the fact that it seems to be a sink rather than a source of sea water would indicate that concerns of rising sea level are misplaced. If model"predictions" are believable, why do all the mopdelling reports carry such heavy disclaimers absolving the modellers from all los incured by those who act on their results?