The work, by an international team, is published in Nature Geoscience journal. In 2007, the UN’s climate change body presented strong scientific evidence the rise in average global temperature is mostly due to human activities.
The research team took the temperature changes over the polar regions of the Earth and compared them with two sets of climate models. One set assumed that there had been no human influence the other set assumed there had. The best fit was with models that assumed that human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and depletion of ozone had played a part.
According to one of the researchers involved with the study, Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, formally showing that the Antarctic was being influenced by human activities was the key development
“In the recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report for example,” he said, “it wasn’t possible to make a statement about the Antarctic because such a study had not been done at that point.
“But nevertheless when you do that you see a clear human fingerprint in the observed data. We really can’t claim anymore that it’s natural variations that are driving these very large changes that we are seeing in our in the climate system.”
Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said: “Our study is certainly closing a couple of gaps in the last IPCC report.
“But I still think that a number of people, including some politicians, are reluctant to accept the evidence or to do anything about it until we specifically come down to saying that one particular event was caused by humans like a serious flood somewhere or even a heatwave.
“Until we get down to smaller scale events in both time and space I still think there will be people doubting the evidence.”
– from bbc
I like what Stott says at the end about people needing something bad to happen before they can really accept the problem. The sad part is that, with climate change, the actions we take now won’t impact us for about another 50 to 60 years in the future. There’s a lag time between carbon dioxide emissions and carbon dioxide concentrations – for example, if our emissions completely stopped today, when the atmospheric concentration is at 388 ppm, it would keep rising until it levelled off at about 450-500 ppm. So if we wait for something bad to happen to take action, things will get worse and worse for another 50 years or so until we start to see some improvement.
Would you like to come check out my blog, which has to do exclusively with climate change? Its purpose is fourfold:
1) to realize the public’s place in the climate change debate
2) to decide which sources to trust for scientific information
3) to choose the best possible course of action, given the risks and uncertainties
4) to share promising sources and ideas
I’d love you to come have a look. There’s probably a link on my username.
sure i will.
We may not face the worst climate issues. because we will die before that. But our children have to face than.
So we have 2 moral duties. 1) Take actions to make a better place for our children. 2) corporate greed is the real reason for climate change. so we have to punish them. Its by reducing our spending and stopping consumerism.
thanks for visiting.