Global Warming

Chelsey Sabilla

Professor Klinger

SCI262-AE

3 October 2016

Global Warming

        New research proposes that the Earth could be condemned to ruination to global warming of two degrees Fahrenheit. A recent study published on one of the world’s top science journals, Nature, presents the most complete reconstruction to date of global sea-surface temperatures for the past two million years. The conclusions in this study, however, isn’t supported by the evidence, said top scientists. The studies in Nature informed that “even preventing any further increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could still leave the Earth doomed to a catastrophic temperature rise of up to seven degrees Celsius (about thirteen degrees Fahrenheit).”

        Chief of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, asserted that Nature’s claim was incorrect. Similarly, Jeffrey Severinghaus, a paleo climatologist at Scripps Institution for Oceanography in San Diego, argued that the study’s result is not logical as it is based on a “fundamental mistake.”

        Nature’s study author, Carolyn Snyder, a former postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, said she wasn’t trying to detail a climate report, but after she examined the close connection between temperature changes in sea-surface and carbon dioxide natural releases, she attempted to show what that might show and apply to for in the future. Her results show an increased three to seven degree Celsius temperature. Snyder, who now is a climate policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reported that “this close relationship between temperature and greenhouse gases is remarkably stable,” and that the developing study is “the coupling factor between the two.”

        Other scientists, however, object Snyder’s claim saying that she has overstated what that relationship holds about today’s situation because of the way she predicted future outcomes from ice ages from the past to today’s different climate. Earth sciences professor at the University of Washington, Eric Steig, stated that the number from her findings was enormous. “She’s making a statement about the future, but I don’t find anything in the paper that explains why she thinks she can do that.” In actual fact, NASA’s Schmidt said, if greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere were to stay constant to today, there may be a 0.5 degrees Celsius increase in temperature. Other studies propose that they could hit 2 degrees, but, Schmidt said, no credible evidence lead to the idea that it could rise up to seven degrees (information from Craig).