Friday, May 15, 2009

Near-unanimous consensus

Few things exasperate me as much as people invalidating the reality of global warming just because some part of the world has a particularly cold winter or a really devastating ice storm. What were they doing in science class, anyway --- flirting? Throwing spitballs?

I want to call your attention to an article entitled "Humans Seem Hell Bent on Committing Mass Suicide -- But There's Still Hope". Here's just one paragraph:

The world’s scientists, traditionally competing for grants and laurels like the Nobel Prize, rarely agree. For the first time in scientific history, however, climate scientists have not only reached a near-unanimous consensus that human-made global warming threatens humanity, but have formed a global organization—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—to try and prevent it. Their most recent report states: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature [since 1850]. ... [Climate change], together with sea level rise, are expected to have mostly adverse effects on natural and human systems [including] ... increased risk of deaths, injuries and infectious, respiratory and skin diseases ... water and food-borne diseases; posttraumatic stress disorders ... increased risk of deaths and injuries by drowning in floods; migration-related health effects."

What part of "for the first time in scientific history" do the global-warming deniers not understand?

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