“Numerous studies show rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but our study provides the critical link between those concentrations and the addition of energy to the system, or the greenhouse effect.”
It’s important to be clear that by no means did the Berkeley researchers
need to do this in order to prove that carbon dioxide is trapping heat in the atmosphere: as physicist and climate expert Ken Caldeira
explained to the San Francisco Chronicle, “the underlying physics is robust and was never in question.” Climate scientist Andrew Dessler
told the Associated Press that the work is somewhat similar to using a falling rock to confirm gravity.
But the findings do help validate climate models that depend, in part, on correctly simulating the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Mashable’s Andrew Freedman
explains. All of that
research warning that human activity is directly contributing to global warming, in other words, and that “substantial and sustained” reductions in emissions are our best hope of avoiding “severe, pervasive and irreversible” consequences, is no longer deniable — not that it ever was.
Scientists stick it to climate deniers: Study provides direct evidence that human activity is causing global warming
