Global warming has not stalled, insists world's best-known climate scientist
Source: The Guardian
Global warming has not stalled, insists world's best-known climate scientist
Prof James Hansen warns public not to be fooled by 'diversionary
tactic' from deniers
Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 May 2013 13.50 BST
Suggestions that global warming has stalled are a "diversionary tactic" from "deniers" who want the public to be confused over climate change, according to the world's best-known climate scientist. Prof James Hansen, who first alerted the world to climate change in 1988, said on Friday: "It is not true that the temperature has not changed in the two decades."
Since 1998, when the Niño climate phenomenon caused global temperatures to soar, the rate of increase in warming has slowed, causing some sceptics to suggest climate change has stopped or that the effect of rising carbon dioxide levels on climate is not as great as previously thought.
Prof Hansen, speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, rejected both arguments. "In the last decade it has warmed only a tenth of a degree compared to two-tenths of a degree in the preceeding decade, but that's just natural variability. There is no reason to be surprised by that at all," he said. "If you look over a 30-40 year period the expected warming is two-tenths of a degree per decade, but that doesn't mean each decade is going to warm two-tenths of a degree: there is too much natural variability."
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Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/17/global-warming-not-stalled-climate
