Turning point in global warming’s war September 11, 2009
Posted by honestclimate in Discussions.Tags: climate change, global warming
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Turning point in global warming’s war
By Thomas Fuller
SF Environmental Policy Examiner, September 10, 2009
The past ten years have seen the first round of the scientific debate about global warming. It has been accompanied by a parallel, but not equal, debate on the same issue in politics, popular media, law and engineering.
In 1988 the ‘first salvo’ (not the first mention, obviously) was fired at a Congressional hearing, when Dr. James Hansen testified that human emissions of CO2, a greenhouse gas, were leading to dangerously high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that this would lead to global warming.
The past 10 years has been a fairly normal scientific debate where elements of the theory and its practical evolution in our environment have been charted, discussed and debated. We now have the equivalent of the opening arguments from either side done and dusted, and it’s time for Round 2. But because of the parallel debates and the partisan nature of politics today, it’s devilishly hard to score Round 1. Both sides are claiming victory, and both sides are premature.
The worried warmists point to evidence that the earth has warmed in tandem with our growing emissions of CO2, and that many elements of our planet’s climate have responded as predicted by the theory of global warming–for example, that the Arctic would warm first and quickest. Skeptics respond by noting that temperatures have stalled for a decade despite copious emissions of CO2, and many elements of global warming theory have not materialised as expected–such as the signature warm spot 10 km high in the tropical troposphere.
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