News
Climate change hits close to home
Story by Mark Page | Nov. 27, 2007
Montana Kaimin
If action is not taken soon on climate change, all of Glacier National Park’s glaciers may be gone by 2020, and 50 years from now, there may not be a snowflake hitting the ground in Missoula, warned University of Montana forestry professor Steve Running at a packed event in the UC Ballroom Monday.
“Missoula snowfall is down 22.7 inches from what it was 50 years ago,” Running said. “It implies that in 50 years, we won’t get any snowfall in Missoula at all.”
Running presented his speech, “The five stages of climate grief,” to an audience of over 500 guests in an event scheduled to honor Running’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Running and 600 of his colleagues in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) share the award with Al Gore for their part in the research behind the film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
UM Provost Royce Engstrom introduced Running by pointing out that the last time UM was affiliated with the Nobel Prize was when Harold Urey, a student and instructor at UM, won the prize in 1934 for chemistry.
“This is an unprecedented call to action,” Engstrom said. “Steve is dedicated to ensuring the students of the University of Montana are well-informed about the issues of climate change.”
Before Running broke into his lecture about the climate problems the world faces and the sacrifices needing to be made, he spoke about the unique reports he helped write for the IPCC.
“It’s not like any other university writing I’ve seen before,” Running said. “Every sentence I wrote I would have to document, or it would be taken out.”
Plenty of dire predictions then followed, many that Running localized for the Montana audience. Besides the effect of less snow on the ski industry, Running said that if more hot summers like this past one occur, trout fishing would suffer greatly from lower stream levels.
“We are continuously breaking records every year,” he said. “And these are temperatures that are higher than in the past 1,000 years.”
Running pointed out this July that Missoula broke several temperature records, with 11 days at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, more days than during the entire decade of the 1990s.
“The climate models predict that in 50 years, that will be an average July,” he said. “We’re heading in the direction of Utah if these climate projections turn out.”
Solutions to global warming problems will require political leaders who are not afraid to talk about real changes in lifestyle, Running said. Until this happens, little change can occur and problems will persist and worsen every year, he said.
“Right now we are using the atmosphere as a free garbage can,” Running said.
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Comments
In the 1970’s, the environmental loons, like Al Gore, were saying the entire earth would be covered in a layer of ice. They were wrong then, and they are wrong about warmth now.
The planet has cycles, and we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we have now or ever had ANYTHING to do with it. People NEVER have and NEVER WILL.
Posted by Sanchez on 11/27/2007 at 3:15 am
Wow. Another one of you. I was confident that you’d all died off, gone extinct (science being the primary killer of your kind). Apparently I am wrong. And apparently some people’s skulls are significantly thicker than others. Who would’ve thought.
Posted by the truth on 11/27/2007 at 11:20 am
Posted by the truth MY BUTT !!!
You must be one of the nut bags who figured out how to make a buck conning OTHER enviromental loony tune wing nuts like yourself. To bad, so sad, but, your big crisis is a CON.
Posted by Sanchez on 11/27/2007 at 1:42 pm
The Sky Is Falling!
The Sky Is Falling!
It is Global “warming/cooling”.
It is Global “warming/cooling”.
What will we ever do?
By this time next year we will all be covered in a blanket of ice or water or whatever else they can think of to make some money.
What will we do?
THE SKY IS FALLING !!!!!!!
Posted by Chicken Little on 11/27/2007 at 2:13 pm
Building Number 7! Don’t forget!
Posted by Sanchez, Jr. on 11/28/2007 at 1:24 am
"Posted by the truth MY BUTT!!!”
I’m going to go ahead and say it. Please, sir. I want some more.
Posted by Oliver Twist on 11/28/2007 at 4:58 pm
Ahhh ..... Building # 7.
I have to say, neither I, as a sane human, nor even the looniest of left wing loons, believe that their fellow hate America first traitor left wing loons Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and the Clinton’s had anything
to do with building # 7. It was AlQueada, plain and simple.
Granted, the destruction made the hate America first traitor left wing loons Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and the Clinton’s, very happy, for personal possible power reasons, but they did not do it.
Posted by Oliver Twist, Jr. on 11/28/2007 at 10:29 pm
the grammar police are on patrol!
Posted by grammar police on 11/28/2007 at 10:31 pm
This $*#% is bananas!
Posted by Jamee Greer on 11/29/2007 at 1:42 am
I agree 100% with Jamee Greer. Anyone who believes in the building # 7 conspiracy or Global warming/cooling/whatever
the new fad of the day, is $*#% bananas!
Posted by grammer police Jr. on 11/29/2007 at 4:16 pm
Wait! I was really just singing the song outloud. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I wasn’t commenting on anything related to the article! B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Posted by Jamee Greerr on 11/29/2007 at 4:58 pm
This is an absolute arbitrary statement. Seriously? NO snow fall in Missoula EVER? Do you not see what you wrote? That is ridiculous! Snow can’t just ‘’stop.’’ Maybe the glaciers will melt, but t here is no possible way that snow can cease. This makes me mad it is so ridiculous.
Posted by Kevin Archer on 12/04/2007 at 5:41 pm
