U.S. Government Report: Effects of Warming Already Being Felt

U.S. government scientists have issued a report saying that evidence of climate change is already “unequivocal” and that warming could reach extreme levels in the coming decades unless greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced. The report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” said that average U.S. temperatures have increased by 2 degrees F in the past 50 years and can be expected to rise 4 to 11 degrees F by 2100, depending on the success of cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Unveiled at a news conference by chief presidential science adviser John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the report also said that the amount of rainfall in major storms has increased 20 percent nationwide in the past century, that northern regions will become wetter while southern and western regions become drier, that extreme heat waves will become far more common, and that sea levels have already increased eight inches in some places in the past 50 years and could rise an additional three feet along parts of the East Coast. The report is being released as Congress debates a controversial bill to cap and place a price on carbon emissions.