A Pause In Global Warming? Not Really

Climate Change, Anthropocene, & Associated Issues

Date posted: 06/15/15

Dr. Conca reports that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as the warming seen during the last half of the 20th Century, according to new study published in Science this month by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The new study used the latest global surface temperature data and other improvements in the quality of the observed record. This study refutes the notion that there has been a slowdown, hiatus, or Pause, in the rate of global warming in recent years. The Pause has been a rallying cry for those not wanting to accept climate change as real. Of course, conspiracy theorists claim that NOAA purposefully tampered with the data to make sure it showed a warming trend (The Week). Because that is what scientists do. Right? The Pause was an idea from a 2013 UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that concluded the upward global surface temperature trend from 1998 to 2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951 to 2012. In the end, Dr. Conca suggests that you do not have to believe in climate change, or science at all, to want to reduce fossil fuel use, especially coal. The health effects and direct pollution effects from getting fossil fuel out of the ground, and burning it, are more than enough reason to decrease its use. And it does not matter if this present upward temperature change is human induced or not. We need to understand it and we need to deal with it. Of course, it is never black or white, and the warming effects appear to be a human-exacerbated natural trend. But if there is anything we can do to mitigate the effects, we need to know what that is. It will be interesting to see what the IPCC says in their next report about the NOAA study.