Science shows climate change is real

I'd like to respond to a recent climate denier letter. It is properly concerned about jobs (more on that later), but is badly misinformed about facts.

It claims 17 years of no warming. I don't know who started that canard, but it's funny that they first claimed 10 years, then 15, and now 17. Soon they'll be claiming 20.

Let's look at the facts. There are two ways to measure world temperature: ground level and lower atmosphere. Atmosphere is more important, as that's what absorbs more water when it's warmer, leading to more rain, tornadoes, and hurricanes. American sensor satellites show the average lower atmosphere temperature from 2010 until now averaged warmer than the previous five-year period 2005-2009, and that in turn was warmer than 2000-2004. Turning to surface temperature estimates, we now have records proving the Arctic is warming 2½ times faster than the rest of the world.

The letter blames temperature changes on natural effects, not CO2. Those include slow changes in the earth's orbit, the solar cycle, major volcanic eruptions, ocean currents, etc. If you combine those and plot them as a curve, world temperature followed that closely until about a hundred tears ago, when it began to deviate more and more. And the rise of that deviation closely follows the rise in CO2.

As far as jobs are concerned, denial hysteria is what's losing American jobs. Energy from solar and wind is getting closer to competitive with fossil fuel energy, and could be the basis for whole new industries. But because we're pussyfooting about, what country is creating new jobs in solar cells and wind turbines? Oh no, it's China!

John F Moore

Libertyville