Climate Science: Skepticism, Transparency, and Multiple Lines of Evidence:
Richard Alley boiled down what is well known by scientists regarding climate change into a quick summary.
Citing multiple lines of evidence as he went along, Alley said “we have high scientific confidence that we are raising CO2, and that this primarily comes from our burning of fossil fuels… CO2 is rising, it is blocking the radiation going out to space. that’s trapped energy, and that leads to warming.”
The lines of evidence range from ice cores and satellite measurements to glacier recession and sea temperature measurements. Alley said we are already starting to see the effects of climate change.
“Various groups… have reached the same conclusion, which is that there is warming,” he said.
Conversations uncovered in hacked emails of climate researchers at the University of East Anglia do nothing to degrade our firm understanding of the science, he added.
“The results do not depend on one fact, one data set, one investigator, one anything.”
Alley added that the evidence for human induced climate change doesn’t just depend on the known effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gases – it also relies on what scientists have been able to rule out.
“We, the whole climate community, have been spending 30 years trying to find a way out of this. Could the sun be doing it? Could the volcanoes be doing it? Could the cosmic rays be doing it?” said Alley.
“We can’t find anything else.”
Grab his presentation here [PDF].
To be blunt, we need a lot more people like Richard Alley. I’ve seen him in several documentaries and videotaped presentations, and he’s an extremely engaging and passionate speaker.
