To the Editor: More Climate Change Points

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More Climate Change Points

We are concerned that the information about climate change provided by Heidi Sonen and Roscoe Shaw (Crozet Weather Almanac: Climate Change, June 2014) may lead readers to believe that (1) there is a lack of strong scientific consensus about human influences on climate; and (2) impacts will be minimal.  We hope that the additional information offered here will help to set the record straight on two key points:

1. “….temperatures are about 1° F higher and sea level is about two inches higher than if humans had never walked the earth.”  It is true that the magnitude of human-induced climate change since 1950 has been only about 1 degree.  But the accumulating buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is now causing a rapid acceleration of planetary warming.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit and sea level rise of one to three feet in this century.

2. “….the science is split” (on climate change). To be accurate, that so-called “split” is actually 97% of all climate scientists have concluded that climate change is real and caused by human activities (see http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/)

Brian Richter
Martha Hodgkins
Crozet

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