Overwhelming Consensus on Global Warming
June 23rd, 2006The National Research Council released a report on Thursday indicating an overwhelming consensus by the world’s climate scientists that the Earth has been hotter over the past 25 years than any period in at least the past 400 years.
The report says there is high level of confidence that the mean global surface temperature was higher in the past 25 years than any comparable period during the previous four centuries, and may well have been warmer than any comparable period since the Middle Ages.
In a separate study, climate experts blamed global warming for much of the hurricane-fueling rise in temperatures in the North Atlantic last year, when there were a number of devastating hurricanes, including Katrina, according to the Reuters news service.
The group of climate scientists also said temperature reconstructions for periods before the Industrial Revolution - when levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases were much lower - supported the notion the current global climate change was caused by human activities rather than natural variations in climate.
The human causes of global warming has been controversial, especially by a skeptical Bush administration. The report should put that skepticism to rest once and for all.
Scientists know much about global temperatures over the past 150 years, since reliable records exist. But for the centuries before that, researchers must read clues left by the growth rings on trees, the retreat of glaciers and even old paintings and diaries that document climate.
The report concluded the Northern hemisphere was warmer during the late 20th century than at any other time in the past millennium, that the 1990s were the warmest decade and 1998 was the warmest year on record.
National Research Council press release
Tags: Global Warming
June 28th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
I don’t know from nothing about reports but I know that in the late 50’s I remember having to wear a jacket in mid September when the fair was in town. It was cold in the evenings 30 to forty degree range. Hell, It don’t get that cold now in January or February. There is no Spring now just a long hot Summer.
The big money guys, oil company execs, Dope Addicts(Rush Limbaugh) and the like don’t want you to think so, but it’s getting warmer all the time. Maybe when the icecaps melt enough to move the coast close to Birmingham they’ll admit they could be wrong.