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E-mails do not change the laws of physics
The physics of heat-trapping by carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases is incontrovertible. As I taught introductory astronomy students for nearly 30 years, it explains why Earth is not permanently frozen.
The stable level of carbon dioxide abundances over the last 10,000 years contributed to the rise of agriculture and civilization. Earlier decreases of 30 percent below this level over tens of thousands of years correlate with ice ages. Over the geological instant of 200 years, however, human activities have increased carbon dioxide abundances by nearly 40 percent. The planetary warming trend of recent decades agrees well with the expectation from the corresponding increase in heat-trapping.
Attempts to tease out important regional details of the warming trend require the much-maligned climate models. They are not perfect, but similar models in fields as diverse as physics and economics serve science, technology and public policy without such vocal criticism. In spite of uncertainties in regional impacts, climate models confirm that the warming of recent decades results from increased heat-trapping and not from any other known input to the climate system.
In challenging this mainstream conclusion, climate deniers have failed to demonstrate either how the increase in heat-trapping could fail to warm the climate or that any alternative cause actually could.
The human economy and its fossil-fuel emissions are like a car accelerating down a dark highway. The scientific understanding of climate change illuminates a curve in the road ahead. If we don't slow down, we're very likely to miss the curve, with grave consequences for the welfare of billions of people.
This inconvenient truth that “business as usual" is a recipe for disaster underlies the profoundly important negotiations now going on in Copenhagen.
Richard E. White, Durango
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