'Step It Up' comes to campus Group calls for 80% cuts in carbon emissions by 2050 (Ann Arbor News)

[marmar]

'Step It Up' comes to campus Group calls for 80% cuts in carbon emissions by 2050

Sunday, April 15, 2007BY TRACY DAVIS News Staff Reporter

Despite temperatures that belied the issue at hand, more than 200 people and a gaggle of green-speaking politicos turned out for a climate change rally on the University of Michigan campus Saturday.

Bundled passersby stopped to listen and applaud as speakers outlined the problem and the event's goal: That Congress find a way to reduce global warming carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050.

"The data now exist and they are incontrovertible,'' said Knute Nadelhoffer, director of U-M's biological station in Pellston, as he spoke from the steps of central campus's Burton Tower. "We are warming the planet.''

He and other speakers had plenty of eyebrow-raising statistics: That at the current rate of consumption, there are only enough fuel reserves for another 50 or so years; that the temperature of Lake Superior has risen three degrees since measurements have been taken; that greenhouse gases, which historically comprise about 300 parts per million of atmospheric gases, have risen 25 percent since 1950; that on our current course, temperatures will be an average of 11 degrees higher by this century's end. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-22/117662047081710.xml&coll=2