Natural History Wanderings

Its our fault and we are not doing much to help the situation

75% of Global Warming Is Manmade

Nature News wrote about research by Swiss climate modellers in a paper published online today. They reported that at least 74% of warming is due to human activities.  An excerpt from the article states:

“Since 1950, the average global surface air temperature has increased by more than 0.5 °C. To separate human and natural causes of warming, the researchers analysed changes in the balance of heat energy entering and leaving Earth — a new ‘attribution’ method for understanding the physical causes of climate change.

Their findings, which are strikingly similar to results produced by other attribution methods, provide an alternative line of evidence that greenhouse gases, and in particular carbon dioxide, are by far the main culprit of recent global warming. The massive increase of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations since pre-industrial times would, in fact, have caused substantially more surface warming were it not for the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols such as black carbon, they report.”

Read more in  Nature News Three-quarters of climate change is man-made

“Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases”  reports an Associated Press article. They report that the U.S. Department of Energy says global creation carbon dioxide, which traps heat, was produced in record amounts. 2010 saw an increase of 6% of 2009. These numbers exceed worst case scenario predictions by climate scientists, who realize their earlier guesses were too conservative.

Over half the increase comes from pollution in China and the U.S. who along with India are three largest producers of Greenhouse gases.  The largest source of carbons emission comes from burning coal, which has increased nearly 8 percent in the last year.  Indian and China are the largest users of coal.

Read more at http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/news/biggest-jump-ever-seen-in-global-warming-gases/