2008 Woodie Awards
Letter: Global warming is not debatable
Issue date: 4/29/08 Section: Opinion
On Earth Day David Barta wrote a rather misinformed column concerning climate change, asserting that "we as a world of people, have no idea what the hell we're doing…we shouldn't even be thinking about solutions until we're sure this is even a problem, because we don't know."
Mr. Barta would be more correct in declaring that he doesn't know; because the international community hosts many experts in bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) composed of members from the Worldwide Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme who do know. All credible sources of scientific fact and opinion are in agreement: global warming is real and almost certainly caused by humans.
The overall agreement is 99.99 percent. There are a small handful of naysayers-I know of none who are considered climate experts. Mr. Barta asserts that he has looked into the research, yet asks very basic questions that could be answered if he checked any of the many legitimate sources of information such as the IPCC or NASA. He asks, "I know the stats, they say that there has been little more than a one degree Celsius rise in AVERAGE temperature over the past 100 years, but what does that mean?"
Taken out of context, one degree may seem like an insignificant change, but this rise in temperature has already had serious repercussions. For instance, in the past thirty years Greenland has lost ice mass equal to twice the size of Texas, and ice in the Arctic is disappearing as well.
As a result of this melt, two islands, Bedford and Lohachara, were completely submerged in 2006, displacing thousands of inhabitants. At the rate of one degree Celsius rise per century, NASA climate scientist James Hansen predicts that within the next century all of the ice in the Arctic will melt, raising ocean levels and effectively putting Washington D.C., New York City, and most of Florida under water. Mr. Barta moves on to ask, how global warming accounts for "the thousands of cities, and localities that have shown no change or even a decrease in local climate temperature over the last 50 years?"
Mr. Barta would be more correct in declaring that he doesn't know; because the international community hosts many experts in bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) composed of members from the Worldwide Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme who do know. All credible sources of scientific fact and opinion are in agreement: global warming is real and almost certainly caused by humans.
The overall agreement is 99.99 percent. There are a small handful of naysayers-I know of none who are considered climate experts. Mr. Barta asserts that he has looked into the research, yet asks very basic questions that could be answered if he checked any of the many legitimate sources of information such as the IPCC or NASA. He asks, "I know the stats, they say that there has been little more than a one degree Celsius rise in AVERAGE temperature over the past 100 years, but what does that mean?"
Taken out of context, one degree may seem like an insignificant change, but this rise in temperature has already had serious repercussions. For instance, in the past thirty years Greenland has lost ice mass equal to twice the size of Texas, and ice in the Arctic is disappearing as well.
As a result of this melt, two islands, Bedford and Lohachara, were completely submerged in 2006, displacing thousands of inhabitants. At the rate of one degree Celsius rise per century, NASA climate scientist James Hansen predicts that within the next century all of the ice in the Arctic will melt, raising ocean levels and effectively putting Washington D.C., New York City, and most of Florida under water. Mr. Barta moves on to ask, how global warming accounts for "the thousands of cities, and localities that have shown no change or even a decrease in local climate temperature over the last 50 years?"
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