CLIMATE SCIENCE AND ITS CRITICS - The Climate Casino - page 296

What have expert reports of the U.S. National Academies concluded
on climate change? When President George W. Bush and his advisers
arrived in 2001, they were skeptical about climate change, so they asked
the National Academies for “assistance in identifying the areas in the
science of climate change where there are the greatest certainties and
uncertainties.” The committee was chaired by a distinguished climate
scientist, Ralph Cicerone (who later became president of the National
Academy of Sciences), and produced a clear and forceful report. The re-
port began with the following statement: “Greenhouse gases are accu-
mulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing
surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.” 7
The review hence concluded that the evidence for human-caused global
warming was sound.
A decade later, the National Academies were asked similar questions
by Congress, and it produced another consensus report. The fi rst two
sentences of the summary stated, “Emissions of carbon dioxide from the
burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human ac-
tivities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate. Because
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the
Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which
could become very severe.” 8 According to the report, there is no ques-
tion about what is happening to the climate or about the primary cause.
Finally, we can turn to the latest published report of the IPCC,
which is the authoritative international group reviewing climate-change
science. This report reviewed the evidence and concluded, “Warming of
the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations
of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread
melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. . . . Most of
the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-
20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropo-
genic greenhouse gas concentrations.” 9
I could continue with further examples, but the basic fi ndings of
expert panels around the world are the same: The processes underlying
projections of climate change are established science; the climate is
changing unusually rapidly; and the earth is warming.