Proof found of man-made climate change
By Fiona Harvey in London
Published: May 15 2008 02:19 | Last updated: May 15 2008 02:19
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0215fddc-220d-11dd-a50a-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
Scientists have been able to say with virtual certainty for the first
time that the climate change observed over the past four decades is
man made and not the result of natural phenomena.
The research compounds the conclusion of the biggest scientific re****t
on global warming to date, the fourth assessment re****t of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year, which
asserted a strong likelihood that human action was changing the
climate.
The new study raises the likelihood of “unnatural” causes of global
warming to near certainty.
Authors of the study, published on Thursday in the peer-review journal
Nature, examined a greater range of data than any other study so far.
“Changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in
regions of observed temperature increases, and these temperature
increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate
variations alone,” they say.
The authors, including scientists from Australia, China and the US,
warn that man-made climate change is having “a significant impact on
physical and biological systems globally”. They found that more than
90 per cent of the data examined showed evidence that natural systems
were responding to warming.
Spring is coming earlier, permafrost is melting and coastal erosion is
increasing under the influence of rising sea levels, while animals and
birds are changing migration and reproductive patterns.
Barry Brook, director of climate change research at the University of
Adelaide, said: “[We should] consider that there has been only 0.75ºC
of temperature change so far, yet the expectation for this century is
four to nine times that amount.
“So these changes are only a minor ****tent of what is likely to come,
especially if we continue on our carbon-profligate pathway.”
Scientists know they may face difficulties ahead in persuading the
public and politicians of the im****tance of tackling global warming –
research published recently in Nature suggested that global
temperatures were unlikely to increase in the next decade, and could
even decline.
Experts at Germany’s Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences and the UK
Met Office’s Hadley Centre say natural climate variations linked to
the Pacific cooling system known as La Niña, as well as a cooling
phase of a system of Atlantic currents, may push temperatures down
despite the effects of greenhouse gases.
However, after those effects wear off in about a decade, temperatures
are likely to rise much more strongly as the warming effect of carbon
emissions regains the upper hand in altering the climate.
Scientists fear that the expected lull might dispel any sense of
urgency in tackling global warming and provide ammunition for climate
change sceptics.
--
If you disagree with the theories and dogmas of Marxism or Scientific
Socialism
then you are a tool of Capitalist interests. If you disagree with the
theories
or dogmas of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then you are a tool
of
Capitalistic interests. Notice a pattern here? -- Captain Compassion
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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