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Don't Ignore 'An Inconvenient Truth'
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Human activity is polluting the earth and if we fail to take action now, our planet could be sent "into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves."
But some of the damage is already done. The Arctic ice shelf is melting, polar bears are drowning, and severe weather occurrences like hurricanes and heat waves are taking thousands of lives and causing millions in damages each year.
In the face of strong scientific consensus on the dangers and sources of global warming, many members of the Bush administration and the right wing continue to insist it is all part of a harmless natural process.
On Wednesday President Bush said, "[L]et's quit the debate about whether greenhouse gases are caused by mankind or by natural causes; let's just focus on technologies that deal with the issue." But an effective solution will not be found without acknowledging the human role in greenhouse gas emissions.
"An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's new documentary that opened on Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles, challenges these myths and provides striking evidence that "[h]umanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb."
While the situation is severe, it's not hopeless. See how you can take action in the fight against global warming and help America kick its oil habit.
Climate change is here
Nineteen of the 20 hottest years on record have occurred since 1980, with 2005 marking the warmest yet. But proof of global warming goes beyond higher temperatures. In the far north, Inuit hunters have fallen through ice, and villages have lost ground to swelling seas. In the tropics, deluged islanders are making plans for permanent evacuation. Seas worldwide have risen four to eight inches in the last century; Massachusetts alone has lost 65 acres a year. Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places such as the Colombia Andes, which is 7,000 feet above sea level.
Scientists are considering creating an official Category 6 for hurricanes "as evidence mounts that hurricanes around the world have sharply worsened over the past 30 years -- and all but a handful of hurricane experts now agree this worsening bears the fingerprints of man-made global warming."
A study published in Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus that the earth's temperature is rising due to human activity. In 2005, a top group of scientists convened by British Prime Minster Tony Blair met and examined the catastrophic impacts of global average temperature increases. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program, an intergovernmental agency, also concluded that humans are driving the warming trend through greenhouse gas emissions, noting "the observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effects of short-lived atmospheric constituents such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone alone."
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