Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson said in 2001 he believed the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania could disappear by 2015. In 2005 it was revealed the world was experiencing the greatest change in temperature since the last Ice Age. The "greenhouse effect" was said to have started with the Industrial Revolution. By 1977, it was made known, "There are profound uncertainties regarding the carbon cycle, climate and their interdependence...The possibility of modification of the world’s climate by carbon dioxide released in the production of energy from fossil fuels should be given serious prompt consideration."
The burning of fossil (non-renewable) fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas put large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere triggering a change in the climate. It was reported in 1977, the potential climatic changes could see a "rise in the seas level of 5 meters (or 15 feet) in 300 years." "If trends continued," it was added, "global temperatures will probably increase 6 degrees centigrade, or about 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the 22nd century, and even more in polar regions."
This greenhouse effect which trapped the sun’s energy could overheat the planet by warming the air at levels closest to the ground, resulting in melt polar icecaps and giving rise to flooding particularly low-lying nations around the tropics and subtropics (such as Africa, the southern United States, and much of India, China and South America). In 2004, scientists discovered that the polar ice was melting 9 times faster than it had been in 1994. Concerns were expressed about food crisis, "We are headed for a completely out-of-bounds situation for growing food crops in the future."
The National Academy of Sciences made known in 1977 "continued fossil fuel use and growing energy needs probably will increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 4 to 8 times by the year 2000 to 2150."
It had been said a 4 to 8 fold build up in carbon dioxide in 175 to 200 years could possibly lead to an 11 to 16 degree Fahrenheit increase in the average global temperature, turning earth back to a climate similar to that which had existed in the Mesozoic era (some 70 to 100 million years ago).
In 1980, the National Academy of Sciences delivered its 783-page report (said to take 4 years to produce, was 2 years overdue and spent $2 million over budget to complete its study for the years 1985 to 2010), "Coal and nuclear power are the only economic alternatives for large-scale application in the remainder of (the 20th) century…There is a wide difference of opinion about which represents the greater threat to peace: the dangers of proliferation associated with the replacement of fossil resources by nuclear energy or the exacerbation of international competition for fossil fuels that could occur in the absence of an adequate worldwide nuclear-power program...Nuclear fuel supplies are more readily stockpiled than coal and nuclear electricity is thus less subject to interruption by strikes, bad weather and transportation disruptions." It was pointed out, "Power plants have lives of 30 to 40 years." It had already been stressed back in 1977, "We have to be prepared to go to other sources than coal in about 50 years."
