The American Chemical Society’ (ACS) weekly newsmagazine Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) has published an analysis of the divisive issues at the heart of the debate over global warming and climate change. The article appears at the conclusion of the much-publicised United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which sought to seal a comprehensive international agreement on dealing with global warming.
C&EN’s 8,900 word cover story notes that global warming believers and skeptics actually agree on a cluster of core points. These include: the earth’s atmospheric load of carbon dioxide has increased since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s; carbon dioxide bloat results largely from burning of coal and other fossil fuels; and average global temperatures have risen since 1850, with most of the warming occurring since 1970.
The article states that most climate scientists maintain that man-made global warming is happening. This majority opinion has been disseminated in peer-reviewed reports over the past 20 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an entity established by the UN and the World Meteorological Organisation.
However, global-warming sceptics argue that there is still a lot of guesswork in how scientists come to their conclusions. They take exception to the notion that there is a ‘consensus’ agreement on the science - that the science is settled and devastating man-made global warming is a foregone conclusion.
The issue of C&EN also contains three news stories on developments at the UN climate change meeting.
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