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What we know about the climate comes from the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history—the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC’s conclusions, that the burning of fossil fuels is indeed causing significant shifts in the earth’s climate, have been corroborated by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and the National Academy of Sciences.
D. James Baker, former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, echoed many scientists when he said, “There is a better scientific consensus on this than on any other issue I know—except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics.”

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Originally posted by rue:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/ AR2005042801586.html?sub=AR

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washingtonpost.com
Data From Space, Oceans Validate Global Warming Timeline

Associated Press
Friday, April 29, 2005; A13

NEW YORK, April 28 -- Climate scientists armed with new data from the ocean depths and from space satellites have found that Earth is absorbing much more heat than it is giving off, which they say validates computer projections of global warming.

Lead scientist James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist, described the findings on the out-of-balance energy exchange as a "smoking gun" that should dispel doubts about forecasts of climate change.

Hansen's team, reporting Thursday in the journal Science, said they also determined that global temperatures will rise 1 degree Fahrenheit this century even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.

If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin "out of our control," especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the researchers said. International experts predict a 10-degree leap in such a worst-case scenario.

The NASA-led researchers were able to measure Earth's energy imbalance because of more precise ocean readings collected by 1,800 technology-packed floats deployed in seas worldwide beginning in 2000, in an international monitoring effort called Argo. Their measurements are supplemented by better satellite gauging of ocean levels, which rise both from meltwater and as the sea warms and expands.

With this data, the scientists calculated the oceans' heat content and the global energy imbalance. They found that for every square meter of surface area, the planet is absorbing almost one watt more of the sun's energy than it is radiating back to space as heat -- a historically large imbalance. Such absorbed energy will steadily warm the atmosphere.

The 0.85-watt figure corresponds well with the energy imbalance predicted by the researchers' supercomputer simulations of climate change, the report said.

Those computer models factor in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane and other gases -- produced by automobiles and more esoteric sources, such as pig farms. Those gases keep heat from escaping into space. Significantly, greenhouse emissions have increased at a rate consistent with the detected energy imbalance, the researchers said.

"There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming," said Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University's Earth Institute. "This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for."

Fourteen other specialists from NASA, Columbia and the Energy Department co-authored the study.

Klaus Hasselmann, a leading German climatologist, praised the Hansen report for its innovative work. "This is valuable additional supporting evidence" of man-made climate change, he said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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What nobody in the media seemed to notice was that the hole was located fifty miles downwind of Mt. Erebus, one of the largest active volcanos on the planet. Erebus spews out more greenhouse gasses per week than combined human industry does in a year, and, after allowing for a consistant delay, the hole's size varied almost exactly with the volcano's activity cycle. Also, since upper atmosphere ozone regeneration is tied in with solar ultraviolet radiation levels, the polar regions, which are in darkness for months at at time, are much more vulnerable to such problems than the rest of the planet.

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But, since none of that is likely to panic the public into watching a TV news show, or buying a magazine, it was largely ignored. Calm consideration just isn't sexy to advertisers.

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There's just as much evidence that the planet is heading into a new ice age, and that, ironically, industrial biproducts might be the only thing holding it back.

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Anyone interested in the subject should read the novel Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael F. Flynn, which, while fictional, is well researched on the subject of global climactic changes.

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