What’s Really Causing Global Warming?
Here’s a good article for Americans who believe that there exists a debate regarding the theory of anthropogenic global warming, written by Dr. Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I say “Americans” because such a debate does not exist elsewhere around the globe; the policy-makers and garden variety citizens in the 200+ sovereign nations outside the U.S. simply accept science and deal with it accordingly, as hard to imagine as that may be.
In this short and accessible piece, Dr. Schmidt compares the investigation on climate change to that of a crime scene, in which all the potential causes and suspects are considered. In particular, whose fingerprints are on the murder weapon?
From a variety of data sources, especially satellite imaging, we know that the surface of the planet has warmed, the upper atmosphere has cooled, the oceans are gaining an enormous amount of heat, sea level is rising, Arctic ice has greatly receded and glaciers around the world are in retreat. But precisely why?
The brightening and dimming of the sun? The wobbling of the planet’s orbit ? Human activity?
Like so many other school children, I wrote many book reports in fourth grade, and read them aloud to the class. My teacher, Ruth Tindall, would have a conniption if any of us revealed the book’s denouement, on the basis that the other students would feel no desire to read it. Thus, I’ll leave this a cliff-hanger. It’s the….
