Scientists agree: Humans causing global warming
Report today makes strongest assertion to date
Using their strongest language to date, the world's leading climate scientists are reporting today that they are basically certain that burning gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels has unnaturally heated the atmosphere -- and the effects are likely to last for centuries.
As report co-author Philip Mote, the Washington state climatologist, said in translating his fellow scientists' language about responsibility: "We did it."
"Scientists are pretty well done arguing about whether the warming in the last 50 years is related to burning fossil fuels," Mote said.
Researchers said they are more than 90 percent certain that global warming is caused by humans -- their most powerful assertion to date. And that conclusion was even stronger until last-minute maneuvering by China, whose exploding energy use stands to exacerbate the problem.
Worldwide, the report says, the warming is likely to mean intensified droughts and heat waves, along with unusually strong storms -- such as the ones that left millions of Northwesterners shivering in December, while killing 13.
The scientists also highlighted an increasingly worrisome global trend: acidification of the oceans, which could unravel the marine web of life. It is caused by the carbon dioxide spewed out by power plants, cars and countless other sources, as well as methane and other gases.
In the Pacific Northwest, residents appear headed into a period of more drought, less snow for skiing -- and less water for drinking and watering lawns in the summer. That could mean perilous times for forests, glaciers, salmon and, ultimately, orcas, which eat the salmon.
If there is a smidgen of good news, it's that many of the worst-case scenarios for rising sea levels don't look as bad as before -- although that signals a slowing of the previously predicted rate, not a reprieve.
And, because recent and unexpected melting of ice in Greenland wasn't factored into the report's predictions, even this bright spot might soon fade.
"It's a cautious, conservative estimate," Mote said.
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Scientists agree: Humans causing global warming
