Global Warming

Global Warming Already Causing Great Changes

Earth has already undergone significant climate and environmental changes since world leaders first gathered to try to solve global warming more than two decades ago.

Diplomats from more than 190 nations are now meeting in Lima, Peru, to prepare for a new treaty slated to be signed next year to finally reduce greenhouse gas emissions—albeit many years from now.

An Associated Press survey found that worldwide CO2 emissions are up 60 percent, sea level has risen 3 inches and the average global temperature is up 0.6 degree Fahrenheit since 1996.

Almost 5 trillion tons of ice that once covered Greenland and Antarctica also have melted during the period.

The number of climate, water and weather disasters each year has more than doubled, compared to the period from 1983 to 1992, according to Belgium’s Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

“Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences,” Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, told the AP.