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Climate change intensifies weather events | Letter
EDITOR: An enormous number of peer-reviewed scientific articles support human-caused climate change (HCCC). Here are a few examples:
• “Efficacy of Climate Forcings” in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Sept. 28, 2005) describes how carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases, ozone, aerosols, land cover, sun and volcanoes have changed the earth's energy balance from 1750 to 2000.
• “Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica,” in Nature (June 3, 1999) describes the changes in temperature and carbon dioxide concentration over the last 420,000 years, as measured at Vostok, Antarctica.
• “Sea-Level Fluctuations During the Last Glacial Cycle” in Nature (June 19, 2003) describes what the title says.
• “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” in Open Atmospheric Science Journal (2008) argues that HCCC will be detrimental to our way of life if greenhouse gas emissions continue.
• The book “Storms of my Grandchildren,” by climate scientist James Hansen, does an excellent job of explaining the causes and effects of HCCC in language a nonscientist can understand.
When I first heard of human-caused climate change in 1978 the forecast that increases in greenhouse gasses would cause the earth’s temperature to rise and make storms more violent seemed reasonable, but I thought it would happen long after my lifetime.
This year has been a year of floods and violent storms, and it is highly likely that HCCC made the floods and storms this year worse.