Watching the destructive progress of global warming can be pretty depressing - especially when you consider that even if we stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere today (i.e. if we, right this minute, put the giant pause button on many of our activities) it will take many years yet before the process will slow, halt, or reverse.

Even if CO2 emissions stop tomorrow... global warming will continue for another century, boosting average temperatures by a further few tenths of a degree. Atmospheric scientists call this "committed warming", and it happens because the oceans take so long to warm up compared with the atmosphere. In essence, the oceans are acting as a giant air conditioner, keeping the atmosphere cooler than it would otherwise be for the present level of CO2. Most policy-makers fail to take this committed warming into account, says Gerald Meehl, a climate modeller at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder. "They think if it gets bad enough we'll just put the brakes on, but we can't just stop and expect everything to be OK, because we're already committed to this warming." - New Scientist

Alan Thorpe

If this predicament wasn't troubling enough, as we're banding together and getting ready to head out and face this potentially cataclysmic event, we're met with a small band of people that want to bar our way. This band refuses to believe anything is amiss, and nonchalantly shrugs off the potential implications of their suggested torpidity should they be proved wrong.

Alan Thorpe, Britain's leading climate scientist, tired of being held up by this band of naysayers, is working to get past them so we can get on with the job at hand.

Alan Thorpe, Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, said yesterday he planned to defeat so-called 'deniers', first on-line and later at a public debate.

'We need, very urgently, to discuss what to do now to mitigate the effects of climate change,' he said. 'Yet a handful of scientists, politicians and writers are still claiming humans are not responsible at all. We have got to kill off this notion so we can get on with the real work: protecting ourselves from future climate change. That is why I am challenging these deniers. I want them to outline their case so that it can be judged by scientists. That is something these people have been reluctant to do so far.' - Guardian

Further Reading:

• Climate Change Sceptics Get Day in Sun

 

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