Yet another editorial in The New York Times (9/18/95) urges the public and the decision makers in government to take seriously the greenhouse effect. A recent account of the variations in average global surface temperature is reproduced here.
Speculations abound regarding the damage that future temperature increases may cause (rising sea levels, increases in droughts, etc.).
According to the report by William Stevens of the NYT (9/10/95), the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Global Change has concluded that the warming of the last century, and especially of the last few years, "is unlikely to be entirely due to natural causes and that a pattern of climatic response to human activities is identifiable in the climatological record." This is the same conclusion that was expressed in 1988, at a congressional hearing in Washington, by James Hansen, a leading government atmospheric scientist. Hansen's testimony triggered increasing media coverage of this issue and some government action. The statement by the U.N. panel may have important implications for future international negotiations on reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide).
More recently, the following assessment, based on the graph shown below, appeared in "Vital Signs 1996", published by the Worldwatch Institute: "The global average surface temperature has risen by 0.3-0.6 degrees Celsius in the past century-the fastest warming since the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago-and the 10 hottest years in recorded human history have all occurred in the eighties and ninetees."
