AoW 1

Directions:
1. Mark your confusion
2. Show evidence of a close reading. Mark up the text with questions and/ or comments
3. Write a one-page reflection on your own sheet of paper
Has global warming hit a plateau?
And what would that mean for the threat of catastrophic climate change?
PUBLISHED AUGUST 24, 2013, AT 10:00 AM THE WEEK
Why has the warming trend slowed?
Climatologists aren't sure. What they do know is that the average air temperatures at the earth's
surface have risen only about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1998 the hottest year of the 20th
century even as humanity has continued to pour vast quantities of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The world pumped roughly 110 billion tons of CO2 into
the air between 2000 and 2010 about a quarter of the total put there by mankind since the start
of the Industrial Revolution. According to the prevailing models of man-made climate change,
greenhouse gases heat the planet by trapping solar radiation in the atmosphere that might
otherwise radiate into space. So the additional emissions over the past decade should have
caused average temperatures to continue to climb as steeply as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
Climate-change skeptics say the plateau in warming proves that the climate isn't as sensitive to
greenhouse emissions as scientists claim, and that it would therefore be foolish to adopt costly
measures to limit the use of fossil fuels that emit CO2. "There is no problem with global
warming," said Ian Plimer, an earth sciences professor at Australia's University of Melbourne. "It
stopped in 1998."
Do climate scientists agree?
No. They concede that temperatures haven't risen as rapidly as they did in the previous two
decades, but say the world is still getting warmer due to man-made emissions. Despite the
plateau in average temperatures, climatologists point out, the 2000s were hotter than the 1990s,
and nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. Overall, the world has
warmed by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds modest, but is a tremendous amount of heat for
the entire surface of the earth, already causing major melting of the polar ice caps and noticeably
more extreme weather throughout the world. Still, that doesn't explain what happened to the
"missing heat" the warmth the last decade's greenhouse gas emissions should have trapped in
the atmosphere.
Where did the heat go?
It might be in the depths of the ocean. The world's seas absorb more than 90 percent of the extra
energy that greenhouse gases trap on earth, yet the ocean is rarely included in global warming
estimates, which are typically based on measurements of air temperature. A recent study in the
journal Geophysical Research Letters found that deep ocean waters below 2,300 feet have heated
up since 2000, even as the temperature of surface seawater remained stable. "Warming over the
last decade has been hidden below the ocean surface," said Richard Allan, a climate scientist at

Britain's University of Reading. If you take the oceans into account, he says, "global warming
has actually not slowed down." If oceans are indeed the reason for the pause, the extra heat
would eventually rise to the surface causing a sudden new warming trend. Some climate
scientists, however, think that much of the heat is missing because it never made it into Earth's
climate system in the first place.
Why would that happen?
Possibly because the sun hasn't been shining as brightly. Over an average of 11 years, the sun's
energy output rises and falls, subtly influencing Earth's climate. The last solar maximum
occurred in 2000; since then, a prolonged solar minimum has kept the sun dimmer than usual.
Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says that lower solar radiation
could account for up to 15 percent of the missing heat. Another theory is that about 30 percent of
the missing heat is due to an influx of sunlight-blocking particles into the stratosphere vast
quantities of pollution from coal-burning China and several mid-sized volcanic eruptions,
including on Montserrat in the Caribbean and in Papua New Guinea. These particles work in the
opposite way to greenhouse gases, reflecting solar radiation away from the planet.
What does the future hold?
Most climatologists are adjusting their predictions to show a slower pace of warming in future
decades. But they say the fundamental threat has not changed. A recent study in the
journal Nature Geoscience analyzed data from the past decade and calculated that a doubling of
carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere above pre-industrial times which would
occur by 2050 under current trends would raise temperatures by between 1.6 and 3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit. That's lower than the estimates made by the United Nation's panel of climate
scientists in 2007, which said that a doubling of atmospheric carbon would raise temperatures by
as much as 5.4 degrees. But climatologists say an additional increase of even 2 degrees would be
catastrophic, causing massive ice melting, rising sea levels, severe coastal flooding, prolonged
droughts, and other disruptions. When the natural factors now holding back warming subside,
researchers warn, it could be like a dam breaking, "with more rapid warming appearing over the
next few years."
The skeptics' favorite scientist
Richard Lindzen is a climate change skeptic with a novel theory. The MIT meteorologist
concedes that greenhouse gases cause warming, but he believes Earth will be able to regulate its
temperature, like a thermostat, thanks to clouds. Lindzen argues that when surface temperature
increases, the moist air that rises from the tropics will rain out more of its moisture, leaving less
to form the wispy, high clouds known as cirrus. Just like greenhouse gases, those cirrus clouds
trap heat in the atmosphere, so a decrease in them would counteract the increase of greenhouse
gases. "If I'm right, we'll have saved money" by not adopting emissions restrictions, says
Lindzen, who recently testified before Congress at the request of Republican skeptics. Most
climatologists dispute Lindzen's theory, saying his papers have been riddled with erroneous data
and unproven assumptions. Lindzen is "feeding upon an audience that wants to hear a certain
message," says Christopher S. Bretherton, an atmospheric researcher at the University of
Washington. "I don't think it's intellectually honest at all."