Global Warming Accelerates Global Warming

Global warming is likely to become a political issue now that Rita has been upgraded to Category 5, because scientists say that the increasing temperature of the ocean makes hurricanes more intense.

Today, the journal Nature added to the evidence that global warming must be taken seriously with research that shows that the European heat wave of 2003—which resulted in more than 10,000 deaths in France and thousands more throughout Europe—caused vegetation to release 500 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, whereas normally plants absorb CO2.

The 2003 event shows that forests, even in temperate areas such as Europe, cannot be guaranteed to suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, says Chris Jones, who studies the carbon cycle at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, UK…

Such an extreme summer has never been recorded before. "This was basically unprecedented," says Andrew Friend, an author on Ciais's paper. "It shows there's a danger in assuming that climate change is only going to be gradual."

In other words, global warming accelerates global warming.