Rutgers University: Global Warming
What the world-and Rutgers-can do about global warming - 02/21/07
As a winter storm closed in on New Brunswick February 13, a panel of environmental scholars at Rutgers came together to discuss global warming and how the country, the university, and individuals might cope with it. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had issued its summary report for policymakers February 2, saying that evidence for global warming was "unequivocal" and that it was "very likely" human beings are responsible for it.
Alan Robock, professor of environmental sciences and a contributor to earlier editions of the IPCC, explained that science and technology have gotten better since the first IPCC report in 1990, and that this has allowed the IPCC to become"90 percent certain" about the role of humans in global warming.
"The only scenario that is consistent with the warming [of the global climate] over the past 100 years is human," said Robock, to an audience of students, faculty, and staff who came to listen to the panel discussion, "Global warming: It's later than we think, but it's not too late." Robock added that the world's climate has been warmer in the past 50 years than at any time in the past 1,300 years.
Anthony Broccoli, professor of environmental sciences and IPCC contributor, discussed the impact of climate change on New Jersey. The higher sea level already has risen in the past century and should rise at least another 2 feet in the next century, submerging much of the coast and the shore of Raritan Bay.
The higher sea level portends severe flooding farther inland during strong storms, Broccoli said. The cycle of droughts and floods may intensify, and this has significant implications for the management of water.
"Water managers now must make hard decisions about timing the release of water from the reservoir into the Delaware River," Broccoli said. "If they release it when it is too full, it ends up in someone's living room downstream.
