Facts and myths about climate change | Staff/Guest Columns ... - Gettysburg Times
Facts and myths about climate change | Staff/Guest Columns | gettysburgtimes.com
Many lines of scientific evidence confirm that our planet is warming because humans have put greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Measurements taken with various instruments on satellites, airplanes, ground stations, and ocean buoys over many years and continuing now show that less heat is escaping into space because carbon dioxide molecules absorb the escaping heat energy in the same way that the glass of a greenhouse traps heat. The upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming, a distinct signature of greenhouse gas warming.
Further, computer models of atmospheric and ocean circulation are all clear about the longer-term deleterious effects on the climate of this greenhouse gas warming, even if the details vary.
Jeff Colvin is a research physicist and co-chair of Gettysburg DFA. He lives in Gettysburg. The opinions expressed herein are his own.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.