Climate change evidence grows with UN report
Upon reacting to the release of the annual report of the World Meteorological Organization, Dr. Phil Williamson, associate fellow at the University of East Anglia in England had some harsh words for climate change doubters in an interview with the Daily Mail. He was addressing the release of the annual report from the World Meteorological Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations.
“Human-driven climate change is now an empirically-verifiable fact,” he said. “Those who dispute that link are not sceptics, but anti-science deniers.”
The WMO report released earlier this week stated that, once again, last year was the warmest since measurements had been made in 1880.
Other “lowlights” of the report were that sea levels continued to rise due to melting polar ice and Arctic and Antarctic ice levels were far below average.
“With levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere consistently breaking new records, the influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas wrote.
The report shows that the effect of greenhouse gases can be felt in a number of ways. For instance, warming in the Arctic and melting sea ice were leading to a shift in wider oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. That, in turn, created confusing weather conditions all over the globe, and including unexpected highs in the U.S. and Canada last year and chilly temperatures in the Arabian peninsula and North Africa.
Worst of all, the WMO report indicated that we’re making few gains in defense of the planet.
“Provisional data also indicates that there has been no easing in the rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations,” it stated.
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By Earth.com Staff Writer David Searls
