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Facts point to an energy imbalance | Letters | June 5
Ragner Liljequist’s letter (“Global warming: When consensus does not make fact,” May 22) merely echoes the kind of misinformation about climate change that abounds on the Internet, blogs and chat rooms. None of it stands up to scientific scrutiny.
Global average surface temperatures are rising and the rate has increased sharply in the past three decades. The oceans are warming, alpine glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at a rate that is consistent with sea level rise.
What alarms climate scientists are signs that these are happening faster than we anticipated even just a few years ago. As a case in point, the Arctic sea ice cover has decreased about 20 percent during the past two summer seasons as compared to a 15 percent decline over the previous few decades.
The change in Earth’s energy balance due to industrial greenhouse gases provides more than enough heat-energy to account for the observed climate warming. The climate skeptics cannot prove otherwise.
The conclusions leave little doubt. As an oceanographer, I speak for the vast majority of climate scientists who believe it is our duty to society to explain these scientific realities to the public and to policy makers.
Gary Lagerloef, PhD.
South Beach Drive