More evidence that we're changing the climate

By Kent on February 6, 2008 6:53 AM | 1 Comment | 3 TrackBacks | View blog reactions

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research If you've read the IPCC synthesis report, you probably don't need more evidence to be convince that human activities are changing the climate. But here's another nail in the coffin of climate change denialists.1

In the February 5th issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Fortunat Joos and Renato Spaluni show that “global climate change ... is progressing at a speed that is unprecedented at least during the last 22,000 years.”1

zpq0030891370001.jpegAtmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and sampling intervals over the last 20,000 years. (Click on the figure for a larger image.)
The graph to the left tells the story. Notice the nearly vertical line at the right of (a), (b), and (c). Those lines correspond roughly to the 20th century. The change in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the last century is almost as great as the change that happened over 10,000 years after the last glacial maximum. And the IPCC concluded that “Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.”

I've just finished reading Roger Pielke's The Honest Broker, in which he argues that recognizing a human influence on climate does not determine what policies ought to be adopted. Fair enough. But this paper provides yet more evidence that it's time to stop arguing about whether we're changing the climate and time to start arguing about what we're going to do about it.

1Joos, F., and R. Spaluni. 2008. Rates of change in natural and anthropogenic radiative forcing over the past 20,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105:1425-2430. (link – subscription required)

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TrackBack URL: http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1593

Climate change denialists from Uncommon Ground on August 15, 2008 12:05 PM

Last week John Holdren published an op-ed in the Boston Globe bemoaning the undue attention paid to the tiny group of scientists who dissent from the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The few climate-change "skeptics" with any s... Read More

Bad news on the global carbon budget from Uncommon Ground on September 27, 2008 5:05 PM

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the previous decade, and despite efforts to curb emissions in a number of countries which are signatories of the Kyoto Protocol. Emissions from the combustion... Read More

Communication and persuasion from Uncommon Ground on October 26, 2008 8:05 PM

Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney ignited a flame war in the blogosphere1 last year when they published a Policy Forum in Science arguing that [S]cientists should strategically avoid emphasizing the technical details of science when trying to defend it.If y... Read More

1 Comment

streamtracker | February 17, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply

Nice blog!

This paper should be getting some more attention.

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