Believers in denial

By PAULA KIRBY
Added: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 UTC

The polar ice caps are melting before our very eyes, low-lying land is already being reclaimed by the rising seas, more and more species are teetering on the brink of extinction as they find themselves ill adapted to the changing environment around them. Despite a few inevitable mavericks, the consensus in the scientific community is overwhelming: anthropogenic (i.e. caused by humans) global warming - AGW - is a reality, the speed and extent of the warming eclipsing anything that has been seen before in at least the last half a million years, and correlating convincingly with the dramatic increase in the amount of carbon dioxide humans have been pumping into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. None of the other hypothetically possible causes fits the evidence. This isn't even new science: the physics behind the heat-capturing qualities of carbon dioxide has been known about for 150 years.

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http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/paula_kirby/2009/12/believers_in_denial.html

TAGGED: -, EARTH SCIENCES, IRRATIONALITY

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