Global Warming Has Accelerated Since Kyoto—Worse Than Worst Predictions

by Heidi Stevenson

23 November 2009

Not even the bleakest predictions from the time of the Kyoto Accord anticipated how bad global warming has gotten in the last 12 years since the agreement. It's not surprising, since carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 31 percent.

University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver says that "nobody in their wildest expectations" would have forecast the dramatic loss of ice in the Artic Sea, an area the size of Alaska. Since 2000, Greenland has lost about one trillion tons of ice. Antarctica, which had not been expected to lose any ice during the Kyoto talks, has lost a trillion tons since 2002.

Since Kyoto:

• Oceans have risen 1½ inch.
• Average temperature has risen .4° C.
• Glaciers have lost an average of 25 feet of ice.
• Reservoirs on the Colorado River, which had been almost full in 1999, had shrunk to half by 2007.
• More than 37 million acres of evergreen forest are dying from the ravages of beetles that are no longer killed by winter cold.

The rate of permafrost melting is alarming. Oceans are becoming more acid. Blackouts, partly the result of climate change, happen seven times more often. More animals and plants are becoming endangered as their habitats change.

The president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change says, "The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative. Things are much worse than the models predicted."