As the Kyoto Protocol dangles before world leaders gathered in The Hague, Netherlands, a local scientist explains the impact of global warming on the world s water and food supply. The United Nation s Climate Conference focuses world attention on the growing crisis of global warming. The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement made in Japan between world leaders that would lower global emissions of greenhouse gasses by 5.3 percent of their 1990 levels by 2012.
Many scientists agree that humans are speeding up the rise in temperature of the earth.
Jim White, associate professor at the University of Colorado, studies ice cores and carbon cycles to learn why the earth s temperature is rising and to predict what will happen as it does. White, Director of Geological Sciences and the Environmental Studies department, says that linking humans to global warming is like linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer a few decades ago. Right now we re in that fuzzy period where it is possible for credible scientists to get up and say global warming is not caused by human impact. These scientists are getting few and far between. White says that global warming is not new.