A recent study concludes that the Earth’s temperature is rising to a point higher than any time in the last million years and warns about the continuing effect of pollution caused by human activity. The study found that warming continued slowly during the 20th Century until 1975, when the temperature increases began to average approximately 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade.  The researchers determined that the global mean temperature is now within one degree Celsius of the maximum mean temperature within the past million years.  The study warns that a warming of another degree Celsius could become critical resulting in higher seas levels and the extinction of species. 

James Hansen, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies and lead author of the study, said that further global warming of two or three degrees Celsius would change the Earth into a planet different from the one we know.

Study Warns of Rapid Earth Temperature Rise (Wall Street Journal 9/26/06)

 September 26, 2006