Transcript No Slide Title

Climate Change and the Water Ecology of the
Great Lakes
Workshop
June 15, 2001
Center for Great Lakes Studies
Great Lakes WATER Institute
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
•Program Outline
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•Take Home Message
Date: June 6, 2001
Contacts: Bill Kearney, Media Relations Officer
Mark Chesnek, Media Relations Assistant
(202) 334-2138; e-mail <[email protected]>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Leading Climate Scientists Advise White House on Global Warming
WASHINGTON -- In a report requested by the Bush administration, a
committee of the National Academies' National Research Council
summed up science's current understanding of global climate change by
characterizing the global warming trend over the last 100 years, and
examining what may be in store for the 21st century and the extent to
which warming may be attributable to human activity.
"We know that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere,
causing surface temperatures to rise. We don't know precisely how much
of this rise to date is from human activities, but based on physical
principles and highly sophisticated computer models, we expect the
warming to continue because of greenhouse gas emissions."
Based on assumptions that emissions of greenhouse gases will
accelerate and conservative assumptions about how the climate
will react to that, computer models suggest that average global
surface temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees
Fahrenheit (1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius) by the end of this
century.
With regard to the basic question of whether climate change is
occurring, the report notes that measurements show that
temperatures at the Earth's surface rose by about 1 degree
Fahrenheit (about .6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century. This
warming process has intensified in the past 20 years,
accompanied by retreating glaciers, thinning arctic ice, rising
sea levels, lengthening of the growing season in many areas,
and earlier arrival of migratory birds