Climate
change is back in the news. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) issued its 5th Assessment Report (AR5) in
November, 2014. The Pope issued a remarkable encyclical in June ,
2015 in which he stated that we have a moral obligation to take
action to counteract global warming. And this past Monday President
Obama issued a new set of executive orders that will impose
substantial new restrictions on the use of coal to generate
electricity. So with global warming back in the news I thought that
this would be a good time to alert my faithful readers to the
existence of an excellent summary of the current science on the
subject.
As you
may have gleaned from news reports over the past few months, the news
is almost all bad. The basic message of AR5 is that things are worse
than we thought in 2007 when AR4 was issued. Climate change is
happening faster than we thought 8 years ago and the impacts are even
worse than projected at that time. Moreover, with improvements in
measurement technologies and the increasing sophistication of
computer models, projections are being made with a higher degree of
confidence than in AR4.
The
following graph, which tracks atmospheric CO2 and mean atmospheric
temperature over hundreds of thousands of years, is just one example
of the alarming changes that are taking place. (To find out how
scientists are now able to get measurements from so far back in time
you will have to read the report referenced below.)
Unfortunately,
climate scientists continue to do a poor job of communicating their
findings to the general public. Anyone who has tried to read AR5
knows what I mean. Fortunately, the National Academy of Sciences
has put out a report that is informative, authoritative, and very
readable. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand
where things stand with climate change. The URL is:
I also recommend two blogs on climate change that provide up to the
minute reports of current research.
Armed with all of this information, you will be able to astound your
friends, dazzle your coworkers, and infuriate conservatives who
insist that global warming is a hoax dreamed up by socialists who
hate America.
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