NASA scientist urges action on warming

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. – The effects of global warming are being felt around the world and unless international efforts are launched within the next 10 years species will disappear and the earth will be a vastly less habitable planet by the end of the century, according to NASA scientist James E. Hansen.

“Global warming is already starting, and there’s going to be more of it. I think there is still time to deal with global warming, but we need to act soon. Humans now control global climate, for better or worse,” Hansen said Tuesday at an annual gathering of meteorologists.

Hansen, who came under fire from the White House after a December 2005 lecture in which he called for prompt reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming, delivered his keynote speech by satellite at the 14th annual Operation Sierra Storm meeting at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. Global warming is the theme of the conference.

Hansen, who said he was not speaking for NASA, said that after the warming of the past three decades, the world is within 1 degree Celsius of its warmest period in the past 400,000 years. He predicted that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the same rate, the warming this century will approach 3 degrees Celsius, or about 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

AP