Global warming

Roger Revelle

Global warming is the term ascribed to an increase in global average surface temperature. Independendent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer, etc., say that the patterns of global warming are naturally caused.

Politicians who support the Kyoto Protocal have made the junk science claim that there's a cause and effect relationship between increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and air temperature, but this politically motivated claim is contradicted by scientific fact.

Natural variability of the climate system

The Earth has experienced numerous ice ages over the past two million years, during which global temperatures were approximately 6 degrees Celsius cooler than the present. The frigid temperatures allowed ice sheets to expand southward, covering much of Asia, Europe, and North America. The cooling associated with ice ages is gradual, while the terminations are relatively rapid. However, even the rapid terminations of ice ages take centuries to millennia, which contrasts with the effects predicted for anthropogenic global warming. Projections of future climate predict global surface temperature to rise by 2 degrees Celsius (give or take about 1.5 C) between about the year 2000 and 2100. This predicted rapid warming is attributed to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which through a complex set of climatic feedbacks (e.g., water vapor, lapse rate, albedo, vegetative, and cloud feedbacks) leads to the warming. Ultimately this is the same physical mechanism as the greenhouse effect, in which outgoing infrared radiation is retained by the Earth system, raising the global temperature.

There is a close correlation between the average temperature of the Earth's surface and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. During warm periods, there are high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and lower levels during cool periods.

Politics of global warming

The global average surface temperature warmed about 0.5 C over the second half of the 20th Century, and to some the warming appears to be related to increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The possibility of adverse consequences has become a major concern for environmentalists.

Assessments of climate science by the United Nations (see IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have claimed that there is a scientific consensus on the subject. According to their latest report, scientists are 90% sure that over 50% of the observed global warming in recent decades is human-caused, and that continued global warming should be expected over at lease the next century. Associated with such warming are changes in land and sea ice, large-scale weather patterns, and rising sea levels over the next century.

Several prominent scientists have pointed out the politicized science of the UN's assessment methods. The scientific reports are submitted to a panel of representatives appointed by each country in the IPCC.

Scientists

Roger Revelle Achim Steiner Fred Singer Richard Lindzen Sallie Baliunas Lonnie Thompson

James E. Hansen Michael Mann Charles Keeling Edwin A. Hernández-Delgado

External links

• Fighting the Hoax
• An Inconvenient Truth - Film by Al Gore
• Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus - Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology