Click for big.Climate change is [hello, Congress] still real. California's essential water/politics blogger Emily Green reported this week that 255 of the country’s leading scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates, are doing what they can to get the message across:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Read:
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE [pdf]
Lead Letter Published in Science magazine, May 7, 2010
From 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences
In related news, California has some of the greediest and most dangerous initiative-pushers on earth. Rule by initiative is the first two or three thousand reasons my poor state is in such bad shape these days.
Image above: Carbon Dioxide Concentration [screen grab] from NASA's Global Climate Change website.
1 comment:
Anyone that doesn't believe that climate change is real by now must be in total denial Luisa.
I also live in California and can't imagine the people of this state holding up the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32) signed into law 4 years ago.
Calling for a hold on AB32 until the state's unemployment rate falls below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters, is basically stopping it for good. When was the last time the rate fell below 5.5 percent for a year?
If this initiative passes we will simply have to put another one on the ballot next time to cancel it out. We cannot go on polluting the state and the planet for the sake of capital gain.
You can see where that philosophy takes us by looking at the oil spill in the gulf.
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