by Calculated Risk on 9/22/2005 10:59:00 PM

The Independent reports: This IS global warming, says environmental chief

Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.

The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. "The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming."

There is no question that warmer waters lead to more intense hurricanes. From NOAA: Global Warming and Hurricanes

"...we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricane will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions."

And there is no question that waters are getting warmer; a fact that is not in dispute. The only question has been if man is contributing to the warming trend. And the overwhelming scientific evidence is that man's activities are a major factor in the warming trend. From the American Association of the Advancement of Science annual meeting: Scientists on AAAS Panel Warn That Ocean Warming Is Having Dramatic Impact

Strong new evidence shows that ocean temperatures are rising because of human activity, and the impact on people and ecosystems worldwide could be severe, scientists on a AAAS panel warned Thursday.

The evidence-based on computer models and observations in the field-is so strong that it should put to an end any debate about whether human-caused global warming is a real phenomenon, said Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist in the Climate Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego.

"The temperature-driven impact that these models predict over the next 30-40 years is severe, not only for the Western United States, but for China and Peru," Barnett said.

"Other parts of the world will face similar problems," he added in an unpublished paper released to reporters. The climate models "suggest that these scenarios have a high enough probability of actually happening that they need to be taken seriously by decision makers...if it is not already too late."

The FT also quoted the AAAS report: "‘Global warming real’ say new studies"

They found that the "warming signals" in the oceans could only have been produced by the build-up of man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Non-human factors would have produced quite different effects.

Tim Barnett, the Scripps project leader, said previous attempts to show that human activities caused global warming had looked for evidence in the atmosphere. "But the atmosphere is the worst place to look for a global warming signal," he said. "Ninety per cent of the energy from global warming has gone into the oceans and the oceans show its fingerprint much better than the atmosphere."

And on the "debate", Sir John Lawton commented:

"There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate."

"I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."

The scientific debate is over. It is time for action.