Reader's View: Evidence of climate change is plentiful - Duluth News Tribune
Reader's View: Evidence of climate change is plentiful - Duluth News Tribune | News, weather, and sports from Duluth, Minnesota
Reader's View: Evidence of climate change is plentiful
We now have the highest rate in 15 million to 20 million years.
The March 22 letter, “ Green propagandists lead trashing of industry,” implored the writers of a previously published letter and two columns to explain why scientists emphasize that the best way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is by lowering man’s contribution of carbon dioxide. The letter said, "Man-made carbon dioxide is not the cause of global warming. The sun, volcanoes, clouds, and ocean currents are the main climate drivers, not man."
That’s wrong!
Carbon dioxide, as Skeptical Science states, is a small component of the global carbon cycle. Extra carbon dioxide is cumulative. So, each year more is added. We now have the highest rate in 15 million to 20 million years.
SkepticalScience.com also states, “We have hundreds of years of observations of all sorts of eruptions, at Earth's surface and beneath the oceans. … We have a very good idea of the amount of (carbon dioxide) released to the atmosphere by volcanic activity. … It is between 180 and 440 million tons a year. In 2019, … human (carbon dioxide) emissions were 44.25 thousand million tons. That’s at least a hundred times the amount emitted by volcanoes. Case dismissed.”
Additionally, Skeptical Science reports, “Although water (vapor) is a greenhouse gas, its influence on temperature varies all the time. … That's why deserts get very hot by day thanks to the (sun’s) heat and with a bit of help from the greenhouse effect but can go sub-zero at night.”
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Thus, Skeptical Science disproves the letter’s suggestion that "there is “no empirical evidence” that man’s contribution of carbon dioxide can alter global weather.
Peter W. Johnson
Superior
Email submissions to: letters@duluthnews.com
Include a full name, address and daytime phone number. Only names and hometowns will be published.
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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.