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When Democratic Sen. Harry Reid announced last week that any vote on the climate change bill was being postponed until 2010, Republican Sen. James Inhofe from Oklahoma, the leading climate change skeptic in the Senate, said to Barbara Boxer in a Senate speech: “It's over. Get a life. You lost. I won.” Over the weekend it was revealed that hackers had broken into a climate research database and spread e-mails across the Internet suggesting that there was some sort of conspiracy to distort data in support of global warming.
Politics aside, what is the evidence that humans are largely responsible for global warming? The argument is very simple actually. Since 1750, CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere have risen from 280 ppm to 394 ppm, methane levels have risen from 715 ppb to 1775 ppb, and nitrous oxide levels have risen from 270 ppb to 319 ppb. CO2 measurements since 1955 have come from atmospheric monitoring stations around the world, while measurements before 1955 come from ice cores in Antarctica and deep sea cores around the world. According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, there has been a direct correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperatures. (Global temperatures are partially inferred by examining the percentage changes in tropical, subtropical, and cold water species of plankton in deep sea cores). At 394 ppm, CO2 concentration is the highest it has been in the last 400,000 years. Measurements of human-caused (anthropogenic) greenhouse gases show even greater increases than the atmospheric increases. Excess CO2 is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis, but with deforestation, the plants cannot remove all the anthropogenic CO2. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 13 of the warmest 14 years since 1880 occurred in the 14 years between 1994 and 2009.
Anthropogenic global warming is not some hoax that a small group of scientists is trying to profit from. On the contrary, it is the most widely accepted explanation within the scientific community for why these observed changes are occurring. As the largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita (the U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population but emits 25 percent of its greenhouse gases), it's time we start enacting legislation to fix the problem.
Politics aside, what is the evidence that humans are largely responsible for global warming? The argument is very simple actually. Since 1750, CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere have risen from 280 ppm to 394 ppm, methane levels have risen from 715 ppb to 1775 ppb, and nitrous oxide levels have risen from 270 ppb to 319 ppb. CO2 measurements since 1955 have come from atmospheric monitoring stations around the world, while measurements before 1955 come from ice cores in Antarctica and deep sea cores around the world. According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, there has been a direct correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperatures. (Global temperatures are partially inferred by examining the percentage changes in tropical, subtropical, and cold water species of plankton in deep sea cores). At 394 ppm, CO2 concentration is the highest it has been in the last 400,000 years. Measurements of human-caused (anthropogenic) greenhouse gases show even greater increases than the atmospheric increases. Excess CO2 is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis, but with deforestation, the plants cannot remove all the anthropogenic CO2. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 13 of the warmest 14 years since 1880 occurred in the 14 years between 1994 and 2009.
Anthropogenic global warming is not some hoax that a small group of scientists is trying to profit from. On the contrary, it is the most widely accepted explanation within the scientific community for why these observed changes are occurring. As the largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita (the U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population but emits 25 percent of its greenhouse gases), it's time we start enacting legislation to fix the problem.
