Cobble Hill - Almost every week a letter from Mark Williams is printed in your paper denying global warming. Mark has taken it upon himself to try and convince others that climate change and global warming are not real.
This week he told us to read a recent survey by the American Meteorological Society which would support his point of view.I couldn't find the survey which he referred to but I did find this on their website: "Warming of the climate system now is unequivocal, according to many different kinds of evidence. Observations show increases in globally averaged air and ocean temperatures, as well as widespread melting of snow and ice and rising globally averaged sea level. Surface temperature data for Earth as a whole, including readings over both land and ocean, show an increase of about 0.8°C (1.4°F) over the period 1901-2010 and about 0.5°C (0.9°F) over the period 1979-2010 (the era for which satellite-based temperature data are routinely available)."Due to natural variability, not every year is warmer than the preceding year globally. Nevertheless, all of the 10 warmest years in the global temperature records up to 2011 have occurred since 1997, with 2005 and 2010 being the warmest two years in more than a century of global records."The warming trend is greatest in northern high latitudes and over land. In the U.S., most of the observed warming has occurred in the West and in Alaska; for the nation as a whole, there have been twice as many record daily high temperatures as record daily low temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century."Climate is always changing.However, many of the observed changes noted above are beyond what can be explained by the natural variability of the climate."It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide."The most important of these over the long term is CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation. While large amounts of CO2 enter and leave the atmosphere through natural processes, these human activities are increasing the total amount in the air and the oceans. Approximately half of the CO2 put into the atmosphere through human activity in the past 250 years has been taken up by the ocean and terrestrial biosphere, with the other half remaining in the atmosphere."Since long-term measurements began in the 1950s, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has been increasing at a rate much faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Having been introduced into the atmosphere it will take a thousand years for the majority of the added atmospheric CO2 to be removed by natural processes, and some will remain for thousands of subsequent years." Climate change is very real as are climate change deniers. I think Mark Williams and many others would do well to google "climate change denial".They will find a number of very interesting sites which will explain to them how they have been duped by the denial machine.Tim McGiffin Tim McGiffin Cobble Hill Cobble Hill For more opinion, news, community features, A&E and sports online at www.cowichanvalleycitizen.com