The Heat is On

It seems that everyone is weighing in on global warming, in light of the recent heat waves across the US. I have no good reason to doubt the consensus of the IPCC in their September '05 report that humans are contributing to global warming. The opposition to climate change science always cite "natural cycles" in the earth's temperatures...including Bill Gray, featured in a Washington Post article in May. Although they may have some data and arguments, these have mostly been refuted, while the mainstream scientific community has powerful evidence on display:

From New Scientist:

Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years - a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down. Studies of the thermal inertia of the oceans suggest that there is more warming in the pipeline...The bottom line is that we will need to cut CO₂ emissions by 70% to 80% simply to stabilise atmospheric CO₂ concentrations - and thus temperatures. The quicker we do that, the less unbearably hot our future world will be. -- Fred Pearce, 1-19-2006

The other part of the problem is how much politics has played a role in the whole thing. The Bush Administration has done all it can to suppress the mainstream point of view, censor scientific reports, etc. The ties between industry and the Bush White House have been well-documented. From a 60 Minutes special report, "Rewriting the Science":

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.

Perhaps I was just ignorant for not knowing about this whole mess when it happened, but unbelievably, NASA scientists had to submit their reports to this know-nothing lackey for editing before being allowed to publish them. Then, there's the issue of Bush appointees without college degrees doing the same censor work.

I've seen high school students do presentations on global warming, recycling, pollution, energy policy &c. They got to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. I was really impressed with some of them. But I wouldn't appoint them to work at NASA.

Check out New Scientist for authoritative science reports, and two blogs, RealClimate and ClimateArk, for up-to-date commentary.