Global Warming Politics

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Thought some of you might appreciate this, from New Scientist:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996334

White House report says people cause global warming

13:10 27 August 04

NewScientist.com news service

People are responsible for the spike in global warming in the last 30 years,

says a new US government report. The verdict, long accepted by most scientists,

has encountered resistance from the Bush administration in the past, prompting

experts to question if the president will now enact policies to curb greenhouse

gas emissions.

The report, titled Our Changing Planet, is part of a regular series that

summarises recent and planned climate change research by 13 government agencies.

It was released on Wednesday with a covering letter to Congress signed by the

president's secretaries of commerce and energy, along with his science adviser.

The document reports that global warming in the first half of the 20th century,

estimated at 0.2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, " was likely due to natural

climate variation " , including increased solar activity.

But the approximate 0.5°C rise over the second half of the century, most

pronounced in the last 30 years, can only be explained when factors related to

human activity, such as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, are

taken into account.

Simulating change

" There's nothing else we can blame it on, really, " says Trenberth, head of

the climate analysis section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research

in Boulder, Colorado, where computer simulations produced the result. " If we

don't put the changes in carbon dioxide into our models, we don't get global

warming out. "

Graedel, an industrial ecologist at Yale University, has reviewed the US

government's climate change research strategy and says the report's

acknowledgment of a human influence on global warming is encouraging.

" Well over 98% of scientists competent in this area would agree with that, " he

told New Scientist.

(there is more ...)

Heidi Jean