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2006, the 6th hottest year in history
• Affirms the World Meteorological
Organization
BY ALBERTO D. PEREZ
—Special for Granma International—
PLANET Earth is going down the wrong road, according
to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the
UN agency that measures the variables of the weather
on a planetary scale.
According to recently published studies from that
institution, 2006 has registered as the 6th hottest
year in history, fundamentally due to the
uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases by the
principal industrialized countries.
If
to that we add the indiscriminate felling of forests
– in the knowledge that trees trap CO2, carbon
dioxide, one the main polluting gases – then we are
faced with a fairly uncertain picture in terms of
prospects for improvement.
According to the WMO, the average temperature rose
by 0.42 degrees Celsius above the average registered
between the period of 1961 and 1990, which was 14
degrees centigrade. In 2006, adds the institution,
prolonged droughts occurred in some regions, heavy
rainfall and flooding in others, together with
lethal typhoons in South East Asia that left
thousands of victims.
Also
of grave concern is the melting of the polar ice
caps. In the Artic alone, some 60,421 square
kilometers of glaciers have melted. This has led to
a rise in the water levels of oceans worldwide and
constitutes a definite threat to small insular
states and those countries with low coastlines and
coastal cities.
The
situation was examined by the UN Environment Program
(UNEP) in a recent meeting in Nairobi, and it
emerged that over the next 10 years, along with
other measures, 140 billion trees must be planted if
the world is going to successfully combat global
warming and its disastrous consequences.
The
refusal by some industrialized countries to adhere
to the Kyoto Protocol, which regulates emissions of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, constitutes an
almost insurmountable obstacle with respect to
achieving an improvement in the situation.
The issue is the need to continue putting pressure
on the nations in default so that they accept the
worldwide call, subscribe to the Protocol and adopt
the measures necessary to reduce their pollution of
the global atmosphere.
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