THE planet has been building up temperatures at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second, and it’s all our fault, say climate scientists.
Humans are emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other time in history, the Australian Associated Press reports John Cook, from the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, as saying.
“All these heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere mean… our planet has been building up heat at the rate of about four Hiroshima bombs every second––consider that going continuously for several decades.”
Cook said about 90 percent of global warming was going into the oceans, which act like a natural thermometer along with changes in land, ice, and animal species.
Distributions of trees are shifting towards cooler areas such as the poles or mountains, and animal species are responding to global warming by mating earlier in the year.
“This isn’t because animals are getting randier, it’s because the seasons themselves are shifting,” Cook is reported as saying.
Cook said studies have tried to put a number on how much of global warming is caused by humans, “and the rough answer is, all of it.”
He said for the past two decades, 97 percent of scientists have been in agreement human activity is causing warmer temperatures.
But he said this is not filtering down to the public, who think scientists are about 50/50 on the issue. (PNA-Bernama)
