No More Doubt On Global Warming - Excellent Overview In This Article

[hatrack]

EDIT

1995 was the hottest year on record until it was eclipsed by 1997 — then 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Melting ice has driven Alaska Natives from seal-hunting areas used for generations. Glaciers around the globe are shrinking so rapidly many could disappear before the middle of the century.

As one study after another has pointed to carbon dioxide and other man-made emissions as the most plausible explanation, the cautious community of science has embraced an idea initially dismissed as far-fetched. The result is a convergence of opinion rarely seen in a profession where attacking each other's work is part of the process. Every major scientific body to examine the evidence has come to the same conclusion: The planet is getting hotter; man is to blame; and it's going to get worse. "There's an overwhelming consensus among scientists," said UW climate researcher David Battisti, who also was dubious about early claims of greenhouse warming.

Yet the message doesn't seem to be getting through to the public and policy-makers. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, calls global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people." Novelist Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" landed on the best-seller list this year by depicting global warming as a scare tactic of diabolical tree-huggers. A Gallup Poll in June found only about half of Americans believe the effects of global warming have already started. At the G8 summit of world leaders this summer, President Bush acknowledged man is warming the planet. But he stood alone in opposition to mandatory emissions controls, which he called too costly.

EDIT

She (ed. UCSD science historian Naomi Oreskes) analyzed 1,000 research papers on climate change selected randomly from those published between 1993 and 2003. The results were surprising: Not a single study explicitly rejected the idea that people are warming the planet. That doesn't mean there aren't any. But it does mean the number must be small, since none showed up in a sample that represents about 10 percent of the body of research, Oreskes said. The consensus is most clearly embodied in the reports of the 100-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by the United Nations in 1988. Every five to six years, the panel evaluates the science and issues voluminous reports reviewed by more than 2,000 scientists and every member government, including the United States. The early reports reflected the squishy state of the science, but by 2001, the conclusion was unequivocal: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

EDIT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002549346_globewarm11.html

[NNadir]

1. Yeah the "controversy" is the old fashioned "Big Lie" trick.

Goebells had nothing on the Bushies.