Hurricane Harvey delivered record rainfall to East Texas. Many scientists believe that climate change helped to make the storm wetter.
Credit: Spencer Platt
It is “extremely likely” that human activities are the “dominant cause” of global warming, according to the most comprehensive study ever of climate science by U.S. government researchers. (emphasis added)
The climate report, obtained by NPR, notes that the past 115 years are “the warmest in the history of modern civilization.” The global average temperature has increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over that period. Greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture are by far the biggest contributor to warming.
The findings contradict statements by President Trump and many of his Cabinet members, who have openly questioned the role humans play in changing the climate.
“I believe that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in an interview earlier this year. “There’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.”
That is not consistent with the conclusions of the 600-plus-page Climate Science Special Report, […]
And as I have argued, most recently with my neighbor, changes are coming much faster than most are willing to acknowledge. There has been this feeling that “if” climate warming is real it will not affect humans until the end of the century-we reading this will be dead, no worries. We, regardless of our politics need to organize ourselves to save ourselves from ourselves before our beautiful little planet destroys the work of generations.
In my experience with following this issue, I find that “following the money” leads toward certain consistencies. Those who deny anthropocentric climate change usually have a financial interest in the status quo. The pursuit of “Profit” seems to be the basis of the mindset of many influential people.
Those who follow the money find that many scientists have been paying their mortgages with global warming grants.
“Extremely likely” is not certainty.
Real science is never settled. It’s always open to new ideas and data. Why hasn’t 2017 been declared the warmest year ever?
Inconvenient truths: Norse settlement of Greenland about 1,000 years ago. The Medieval Warming Period.
Steve —
Do you realize that what you post is drivel? I thought you were a smart guy, so I have found it hard to believe you actually think what you write are actual facts. Scientists using climate change to pay their mortgages is so stupid it has to be willful ignorance.
— Stephan
How do they pay for their research and travel?
Refute the Norse settlements. Why did they call it Greenland? Refute the Medieval Warming Period. Refute the GSM and its effects.
An inconvenient truth: Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and can be up to 4% of the atmosphere, 100 times the concentration of CO2. Why aren’t we worried about that?
The bad weather we are seeing is caused by atmospheric compression due to increased cosmic ray input. This in turn is cause by a weaker magnetosphere due to the Grand Solar Minimum. This is real science.
Okay Steve this real science that you speak of seems to also agree, more or less, with the more general view that the climate is becoming more unstable. Regardless of the cause we earthlings have entered a period of “climate instability” that will require adjustments to our ways of living as habitats change. So let us stop blaming or arguing how we got to this point and work together to come up with solutions that this instability is causing. With 7-8billion people on the planet can we afford to wait and see who is correct?
I believe Mr. Hovland might be surprised to learn that the minimized magnetosphere is not the result of The “Grand Solar Minimum”, but more likely caused by the shifting magnetic poles which have been shifting faster and faster over the years and that minimization is a real cause for distress because it will take a less powerful solar flare to do very harmful damage to the electrical systems which we have become so dependent upon. The magnetosphere protects us from the harmful rays from the sun which can easily damage any electrical system, so if we do have a M-class eruption from the sun it will cause more damage than it would have in the past, like in the mid-nineteenth century when the sun erupted and caused the only electrical lines, which were telegraph lines to burn up during a “Minima” period. We do have large eruptions during these “Grand Solar Minimum” periods; actually the term GSM refers to an average, which can include large eruptions within them. With our over-dependence upon electricity, we are setting ourselves up for an extinction event like no one has ever seen since our magnetosphere is becoming minimized more and more rapidly, and we are less and less protected from the sun’s rays. This may be one thing these scientists overlooked when they wrote their report. It is not only our over-production and over-use of carbon based fuels that is leading to our eminent disaster, but a combination of the minimization of the magnetosphere and our over-use of fossil fuels; and the relationship between them is about 50% / 50%. We definitely should not add to the problem, but try to do our part to eliminate our creation of CO2 and switch to non-fossil fuel based energy sources, and create smaller grids; as in home based solar and wind electric production, to eventually eliminate the grids entirely, so as to be less dependent upon the vulnerable large style electric supplies which we now have. This would make the recovery from a large sunspot eruption easier to repair. It is estimated that it would take at least ten years to repair a large M-class eruption or an even larger X-class eruption from the sun, either of which would knock out all the electricity in a country or even the world (which would be a extinction size event).
More information on this subject can be found on: suspiciousobservers.org which has daily news on the sun’s activity as well as links to much interesting related material.