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Compare opinions of world leading experts and influencers.

Are recent climatic changes consistent with the AGW hypothesis?

The strongest empirical evidence of anthropogenic global warming has occurred since the 1970s, where temperatures have been steadily rising. However, some skeptics have suggested that temperature records over the last decade have been steady, falsifying the hypothesis that humans are to blame.

Implications to Other Questions

Does atmospheric CO2 cause significant global warming?
Are recent climatic changes consistent with the AGW hypothesis?

Experts and Influencers

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Agree
Experts In Climatology


RealClimate    Climatology Blog
Agree
The bottom line is: the observed warming over the last decade is 100% consistent with the expected anthropogenic warming trend of 0.2 ºC per decade, superimposed with short-term natural variability. It is no different in this respect from the two decades before. And with an El Niño developing in the Pacific right now, we wouldn’t be surprised if more temperature records were to be broken over the coming year or so.
06 Oct 2009    Source


Experts In Politics


Julia Gillard    Prime Minister, Australia
Agree
Global temperatures are rising. 2009 has been ranked the fifth warmest year on record globally and finished off the hottest decade in recorded history. The temperatures are largely driven by pollution created by carbon emissions. Climate change has a particular environmental and economic impact on Australia. 2009 was the second hottest year in Australia and ended our hottest decade. Each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the last.
23 Jul 2010    Source


Experts In War


Osama Bin Laden    Former Leader of Al Qaeda
Agree
The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent.
29 Jan 2010    Source


Disagree
Experts In Climatology


Richard Lindzen    Meteorology Professor
Disagree
There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995. Why bother with the arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998?
10 Mar 2008    Source


Experts In Politics


Tony Abbott    Leader of the Opposition, Australia
Disagree
I mean in the end this whole thing is a question of fact, not faith, or it should be a question of fact not faith and we can discover whether the planet is warming or not by measurement. And it seems that notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world’s warming has stopped.
08 Dec 2009    Source


Experts In Investing


Donald Trump    American Business Magnate
Disagree
With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore. Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn't care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America's stupidity.
14 Feb 2010    Source


Suggested Expert Quotes


Mitt Romney
I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that.



Comments

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0 Points      Benja      13 Apr 2011      General Comment
Regional or short term weather patterns can defy global or long term climatic patterns. You get regions further from the equator that are warmer than regions closer to the equator. You get warm days in winter and cool days in summer. Similarly, Global Warming will not make every region warmer than it used to be, and every year warmer than the last.

Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of this debate have no patience for communicating this. Instead they justify their position with anecdotes about how warm or cool a region has been recently. While it may be good politics, it's quite literally mad science. Even if you look globally over the long term, the warming has been very modest so far. Climatologists' worries are primarily based on their theories and models which suggest that the trend we're seeing will continue.


0 Points      Benja      25 Jul 2010      General Comment
Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia, is wrong when she says "Every decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the last". The proponents of AGW say here that "The cooling trend from the 40’s to the 70’s now looks more like a slight interruption of an upward trend".

Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition in Australia, is simply ignoring the mainstream scientific opinion altogether. In terms of rhetoric, aside from using The Ignored Evidence Pitch, he's using the "fact vs. faith" association reversal tactic used by creationists, to associate climate skepticism with fact and climate scientists with faith, just as creationists associate creationism with fact, and evolutionists with faith.