{"id":589,"date":"2009-09-28T00:29:05","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T04:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/?p=589"},"modified":"2009-09-28T10:11:55","modified_gmt":"2009-09-28T14:11:55","slug":"anthropogenic-influences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/2009\/09\/anthropogenic-influences\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropogenic influences?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"who<\/em><\/strong><\/a>”\u00a0 There is no uncertainty at all that humans have significantly altered the global atmospheric concentrations of gases we know to be critical in controlling climate…”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

– October 6, 1997 , distinguished scholar Dr. John P. Holdren at the White House\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We need President Obama to step up and say, \u2018I need an economywide emissions cap,\u2019\u00a0\u201d said Andrew Deutz, director of the <\/em><\/strong>Nature Conservancy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u2019s international government relations program. \u201c\u00a0\u2018I need money to negotiate. I need Waxman-Markey passed by X date so I can go to Copenhagen and negotiate.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

-September 22, 2009 New York Times<\/em> article <\/a>on recent UN Conference<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is the evidence that humans are a significant cause of the recent climate changes?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why are we\u00a0 still asking this question?<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Mann and Lee Kump give several pieces of evidence of anthropogenic influences on climate change \u00a0in their book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>First, if we look at the utilization rates of fossil-fuel burning, we can see correlations in increases of atmospheric CO2. Also, radiocarbon has been decreasing (as made evident by tree rings) so we know that the increases in atmospheric CO2 are coming from “radiocarbon-dead” sources. The most prominent “radiocarbon-dead” sources are volcanoes, deep oceans, and fossil-fuels. <\/em><\/strong>Other indicators of anthropogenic influence are the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 (which has been decreasing, therefor ruling out natural, non-plant derived carbon sources such as volcanoes and oceans). Lasly, as used by the IPCC in their most recent findings, the use of “fingerprints” to find spatial patterns help identify underlying impacts (natural and human).<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n
Also, Susan Soloman,<\/a> co-chair of the IPCC working group that produced the IPCC report explained that ice cores show evidence of a rise in greenhouse gases since the industrial area. She went on to state that “There can be no question that the increase in these greenhouse gases are dominated by human activity.”<\/div>\n
In addition to scientific explanations such as “fingerprinting” and “ice cores”, there have been several official policy declarations of the human impact. One example is the recent IPCC report. “The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved…leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming..” (IPCC 2007 Assessment Summary for Policymakers). <\/a>The evidence is there.\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0As made evident by the recent UN conference in New York, unfortunately the leadership is lacking on this issue is seriously lacking and needs to improve.<\/a>\u00a0In today’s <\/a>New York Times<\/a>,<\/em> columnist Paul Krugman partially attributes the lack of policy progress to the fact that “industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don\u2019t.” My question is, what will it take to make the truth less “inconveinent” and get the correct lobbies in place for the future?<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

”\u00a0 There is no uncertainty at all that humans have significantly altered the global atmospheric concentrations of gases we know to be critical in controlling climate…” – October 6, 1997 , distinguished scholar Dr. John P. Holdren at the White House\u00a0 \u00a0 “We need President Obama to step up and say, \u2018I need an economywide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1439,1811],"tags":[1620,1621,1568],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-five-climate-change-past-and-future","category-kyoto-to-copenhagen-course","tag-ipcc","tag-leadership","tag-us-energy-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}