Vanessa Schipani reports that during his confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson said that our ability to predict the effect of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is very limited. That is not entirely accurate. While very limited is subjective, scientists have differing degrees of confidence when attributing different phenomena to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. For example, scientists are nearly certain that increased CO2 levels from the burning of fossil fuels have caused over half of the global temperature increase since 1950. They are also relatively certain that global warming will lead to a rise in extreme heat waves and sea levels. But they are less certain when linking global warming to increased incidences of wildfires.
Tillerson, the recently retired chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, is President-elect Trump choice for secretary of state. While testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 11, Tillerson acknowledged that climate change is real, saying that the risk of climate change does exist, and that the consequences of it could be serious enough that action should be taken. But he added that the type of action seems to be where the largest areas of debate exist in the public discourse. He then went on to question scientists ability to predict the effects of increased greenhouse gas levels. Scientists ability to make predictions based on a particular theory corresponds to the number of times they have verified that theory using different lines of evidence ...
The more verification, the more likely it is that their predictions will turn out to be accurate. To start, scientists have verified the theory of the greenhouse effect, which says that gases like CO2 trap the sun heat, time and again since the physicist Joseph Fourier first proposed it in 1824.
Original working URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/prediction-of-climate-change-impacts-not-as-limited-as-tillerson-suggests/
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