Climate change facts - even if Santorum does not personally believe

From a climate scientist:

TheEmptyMonty Astronaut. Daredevil. Rooster.

Just some facts:

1) The greenhouse effect was discovered in 1824 by Joseph Fourier, who
calculated that the Earth's atmosphere must have a mechanism for
retaining heat; otherwise, nighttime temperatures would be far, far
colder due to escaping heat.
2) John Tyndall, a British physicist, constructed the first thermopile
in the mid-1850s. This instrument allowed him to characterize the
infrared properties of a range of atmospheric gases, including carbon
dioxide. He confirmed, and quantified, that carbon dioxide absorbs and
reemits infrared radiation, retaining heat.
3) Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, was lecturing as early as
1896that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions would cause the planet
to warm. He made the first estimates of climate sensitivity, the
change in global temperatures corresponding to a change in carbon
dioxide, and these estimates have been revised ever since.
4) There was never a name change from "global warming" to "climate
change." The first journal article to ever use the term "global
warming"was titled "Climate change: Are we on the brink of a
pronounced global warming?" (Broecker 1975). Both terms are accurate
and refer to different phenomena.
5) On the same note, there was never any scientific consensus in the
1970s that we were approaching an ice age. The majority of scientists
predicted warming. A minority of scientists looked at the effects of
aerosol sulfates--- small particles that mainly come from coal
combustion, and reflect incoming solar radiation back into space---
and saw that they had a dimming and cooling effect. This effect is
real and does produce such an effect. While this minority of
scientists believed those effects would outweigh the warming effects
of carbon dioxide, thisproved not to be the case, and the majority
warming viewpoint held.
6) We are not currently seeing "natural variation." Yes, of course the
Earth's climate is always in flux; this is well understood by
climatologists, and the idea that they're concluding anthropogenic
influence because the climate is changing *at all* is a complete
fallacy. In fact, it is only by comparing the current, artificial
variation to natural processes that climatologists discern an anomaly
tobegin with.
7) On a similar note, the climate does continually change, but in
predictable, cyclical patterns. If you look at the Milankovitch
cycles, you can see that glaciations occur with roughly 100,000 year
and 400,000year periodicity. These timeframes coincide with changes to
the eccentricity of Earth's orbit, which plays a big role in how much
sunlight reaches the Earth.
8) Each ice age is followed by a post-glacial maximum temperature. The
most recent one occurred 8,000 years ago. After this point, in each of
the previous cycles as well, there is a slow overall decline in
temperatures with minor natural variations that proceeds until the
startof the next ice age. Never in the record has there been a case
when, thousands of years after that maximum, temperatures rapidly rose
to equal or even exceed the post-glacial peak temperature, until now.
9) Furthermore, the current change in temperature does not conform to
previous natural variation. The much ballyhooed medieval warming trend
showed a rise of 0.5° C over 800 years. The current rise of 0.8° over
130 years is occurring ten times as fast, and current temperatures
exceed those of the medieval period. The bulk of the rise has occurred
since the 1960s. Oil production data--- a proxy for fossil fuel
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions--- shows an exponential
increase over this time period, coinciding with temperature trends.
10) It is not "the sun." First of all, variation in solar output does
not track with the current temperature increase. Secondly, even if it
did track with temperatures, it makes no logical sense to argue that
right around the mid-1960s, the effect of solar variation randomly
became much, much greater than it had before. Thirdly, a solar
influencewould cause universal warming across all layers of
atmosphere. However,we are seeing a decrease in stratospheric
temperatures along with the increase in tropospheric temperatures.
This precludes a solar and demands a terrestrial explanation; only a
difference in physical effectsof the lower atmosphere explains the
divergence in temperature trends. The only physical difference in the
lower atmosphere before and after the start of the modern warming
trend that accounts for warming is an increased concentration of CO2.
11) Researchers are not doing this "for the money." I'm a researcher
(not climatology) who has worked on grants from the government as well
as contract work for ExxonMobil. Who do you imagine pays better? If
there were credible evidence against the scientific consensus on
global warming, it would be far, far more lucrative than research
confirming the consensus.
12) There was no evidence of wrongdoing or falsification of data in
the so-called "Climategate" fiasco. A couple sentences were taken
completelyout of context, and construed to mean different things than
they actually did. As just one example, the phrase "hide the decline"
was construed to mean a decline in temperatures. This is not the case.
The "decline" is the decline in tree-ring growth that makes modern
dendrochronological readings inaccurate. The researchers replaced this
data set, which they knew to be inaccurate, with the actual
temperature readings averaged at thousands of meteorological stations
worldwide. They replaced faulty data with the single most accurate and
complete data set available. You can look up the other instances where
their research was mischaracterized.
13) Deniers who claim there has been no recent warming are cherry-
picking data. Many start their trend with the year 1998, which was
extremely warm relative to the years around it, and is thus unsuitable
as a starting point for a trend line as it is not representative of
average temperatures in that timeframe. I urge anyone who's interested
to perform another analysis using 5-year temperature averages, and see
what results they get. Furthermore, the 2000s were thehottest decade
on record, and each of the last 12 years has been one ofthe hottest 13
on record (1998 being the exception).
14) According to NASA satellite gravimetry data, the rate of melting
of the Greenland ice sheet has nearly doubled in the past decade. It
is currently losing roughly 200 billion metric tons of ice annually.
Sea level rise is indeed accelerating; the average increase for just
the 90sand 2000s is twice the average increase from the 1950s through
the 2000s.

There is, of course, a great deal more. But I'm tired of typing these
things up. The science is settled, the consensus is clear. Do your due
diligence, and actually look into the research, rather than accepting
the denier fascination with Al Gore as some kind of evidence against
188years of climate science. The greenhouse effect was discovered 124
years before he was born, and four years before the Democratic Party
was*even founded*. The idea that this is something people have
recently made up for some kind of conspiracy is simply untrue, and
ignorant of the true history of the discipline.
Oh, and one more pet peeve.

15) It is NOT volcanoes. The USGS estimates that humans release 230
times as much carbon dioxide as volcanoes annually. If someone tells
you that one volcanic eruption is equal to yadda yadda yadda, they're
wrong.