Look at the graphs

In a Jan. 6th letter a writer touted a Washington Post story (not personally verified) in 1990 predicting a 3 degree Fahrenheit world average temperature rise by 2020. The letter writer smugly points out that the rise has only been 1 degree F. That is wrong.

NASA, corroborated by the Sonnblick Observatory in the Austrian Alps, points out that since the beginning of the 1900s temps rose about 1.25 deg Celsius. In addition, NASA states that 18 of the last 19 years have been the warmest on record. Sonnblick also points out that, based on over 20,000 worldwide collection points, land and sea, 10% of the globe shows a rise of up to 2 deg C.

The writer’s source is a scientist from the University of Alabama named Spencer. Spencer’s work appears frequently in denier writings. His supposition is that when it gets warmer, fewer clouds form and more heat radiates out creating a negative feedback loop. Sorry. One needs only to look at the graphs: global temp rise, CO2 concentrations, melting of land and sea ice, sea level rise, decreasing sea PH, coral reef bleaching, atmospheric moisture content, record wild fires, migration of pathogens to warming climates, etc, to know that Spencer’s theory doesn’t work. The number and scale of ecosystem shifts are frightening. Again, look at the graphs.

You can find mountains of information at NASA and NOAA websites along with descriptions of how, when, where, and in conjunction with whom the studies and analyses were done.

Barry Kathrens

Spokane