Monday mirthiness – 97 hours, 97 opinions, 97% consensus, 100% cartooned climate science

I predict that 97% of the figures will use the word “unprecedented”.

Later the Spin on this will be a typing error.
Actually we meant 0.097%.
Printers error. Honest.
The 5 stages of recovery?
Where are the bulk of the Easily Alarmed Ones at?
Cause the desperation is lovely to observe.

I predict project the remaining quotes will be approximately:
29 Heidi Cullen

We are seeing CO2 going up—it is a measurable trend, not a cyclical phenomenon. On her own, Mother Nature’s earth cannot reproduce the observed global temperature record we have measured over the past century. Solar activity, volcanoes, and variability of other types are important, but on their own they simply cannot produce the significant warming trend we are now experiencing.

30 Warren Washington

To get the kinds of climatic conditions we have today, you need that increase in carbon dioxide. For anyone doubtful about the effect of human activity on global warming, that finding really is a ‘smoking gun’.

31 Kerry Emanuel

Back in the 1980s, I did not feel there was enough evidence to warrant much concern about climate change. But great advances in paleoclimate, analysis of in-situ and satellite observations, my own acquisition of some basic understanding of climate physics and, yes, climate models have all added up to very compelling evidence that we are changing climate and engendering serious risks in doing so.

32 Veerabhadran Ramanathan

The additional heat trapped by the increase in greenhouse gases from the late nineteenth century to the present time has committed the planet to a global warming in the range of 1°C to 3°C. We have realized only a fraction (25–50 percent) of this warming. … Every decade we delay in taking action, we are committing the planet to additional warming that future generations have to deal with.

33 Ann Henderson Sellers

With the latest IPCC Assessment Report from 2007 the question is no longer about whether human activities are changing the climate, but about how fast and with what impacts? Frankly, I find it discouraging that climate sceptics and greenhouse nay-sayers still get so much attention in our mass media – and apparently credibility with the general public.

34 Matthew England

First, greenhouse gases trap heat. This has been known for almost 200 years. Second, fossil fuel burning is driving dramatically higher concentrations of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and so as a direct result, extra heat is being held in the Earth’s climate system. This is warming the oceans, the atmosphere, and melting ice at unprecedented levels. And third, doing nothing to limit fossil fuel burning will lead to costly and dangerous levels of climate change.

35 Gerald Meehl

Even if you stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases, you are still committed to a certain amount of climate change no matter what you do because of the lag in the ocean. The longer you wait to do something, the more climate change you are committed to in the future.

36 Gabriele Hegerl

Greenhouse warming has very likely already influenced global temperatures and will continue to do so. The chance that the warming is small is slim.

37 Keith Shine

There is unquestionable evidence that human activity has changed the composition of the atmosphere, and there is very strong evidence that this has lead to a change in climate.

38 Reto Knutti

Climate change is a fact and humans are very likely responsible for most of it. Temperature responds strongly to CO2, a fact seen in the observed warming, in climate models, and in reconstructions of past climate.

39 Josefino Comiso

The perennial ice cover, or ice that survives the summer melt, has been observed as part of the Arctic sea ice cover for 1,450 years. The extent of the perennial ice has been declining at a rapid rate of about 11% per decade. The observed rate of decline is expect to continue because of anthropogenic global warming which is expected to be amplified in the Arctic region because of ice-albedo feedback.

40 Noah Diffenbaugh

We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years. But the unprecedented trajectory that we’re on now is forcing that change to occur over decades. That’s orders of magnitude faster, and we’re already seeing that some species are challenged by that rate of change.

41 Paul Shepson

Humans have significantly changed the composition of the atmosphere, and those changes are impacting human health directly, and indirectly through impacts of the health and diversity in the biosphere.

42 Eric Wolff

We do know why CO2 causes warming. It’s basic physics that’s been known for more than a century. It’s pretty straightforward. If you put more CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it will get warmer – there is no way around that one.

43 Mojib Latif

There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.

44 Inez Fung

As CO2 rises, because we understand the physics of the CO2 warming, more warming is expected. There are natural processes which amplify the warming from CO2 – the warmer air can hold more moisture – water vapour is a greenhouse gas and so that amplifies the initial warming. The melting of ice exposes a darker surface and so more sunlight is absorbed. So we are very sure that the CO2 rise will lead to more warming.

45 Richard Feeley

Carbon dioxide is an acid gas. It reacts with water to form carbonic acid. And then that carbonic acid completely disassociates. It forms a hydrogen ion and bicarbonate, and in doing so, it reduces the pH of seawater. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that pH change has been about 0.1 pH units, which is a 30 % rise in acidity of the surface ocean.

46 Shaun Marcott

The rate of change in the last 100 years is very much unprecedented compared to anything we’ve seen in the last 10,000 years. I’m fairly certain that what we’re experiencing is unusual.

47 Pieter Tans

CO2 in the atmosphere, currently, is higher than it has been in at least two million years. What is also significant is that the rate of increase is rapid. The current rate of increase, as measured on average over the last decade, has been 2ppm per year. This is at least 100 times higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

48 Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

The latest IPCC report makes no bones about stating the consensus that human-driven climate change is occurring and it is important. Hundreds of changes have already been observed that are consistent with climate change, temperature rises and associated issues such as ocean acidification.

49 James Hansen

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high.

50 Bill Ruddiman

The public is starting to understand that the vast majority of scientists accept that we have done already something to climate and projections into the future are worrisome.

51 Penny Whetton

Rapid global warming of 4ºC would be unlike anything experienced before by modern human societies – presenting us with huge challenges in terms of our ability to adapt … although some climate change is inevitable, changes of the magnitude described here are still avoidable as long as we are able to significantly reduce global greenhouse emissions.

52 Marcia McNutt

Carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels changes ocean temperature, alters ocean circulation and makes the ocean more acidic. These changes affect the productivity of ocean fisheries and influence how we manage the ocean, but it is ocean acidification, in particular, that may be mankind’s most severe environmental disturbance.

53 Sir Robert Watson

There is no question the earth’s temperature is warmer than it was 100 years ago. There’s no question we’re seeing more floods, more droughts, more heatwaves, all of which are totally consistent with the hypothesis of human induced climate change, which points to the fact we humans are changing our environment.

54 Joanna Haigh

Carbon dioxide has not been at such a high atmospheric concentration for 3 million years. We understand its greenhouse effect – warming is unequivocal.

55 Michael Raupach

There is overwhelming evidence that human-induced climate change is already real and will increase. Climate science shows what is needed to limit warming to about 2 degrees Celsius, and restrict impacts on rainfall, extreme events, ecosystems and more: global greenhouse gas emissions have to be cut by around 60% by 2050 with continued decreases after that.

56 Peter Stott

The chances that we’ve got it wrong, that the scientific consensus is wrong about this, that there isn’t a major human influence on climate — the chances that that’s the case seems to keep reducing as we get more and more data.

57 Dennis Hartmann

The amount of long-lived greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is being dramatically increased by humans. The earth is warming unequivocally and we’re pretty sure that’s due to human production of greenhouse gases.

58 Nathan Bindoff

There are a few aspects that don’t allow us to say with 100% certainty, but what we can say is that we are 95% certain that human activity is the main cause of global warming. Our best estimates actually account for all of the observed change since the 1950’s and that the alternatives, solar variability and natural variations have nothing to contribute over this period.

59 Andy Pitman

Climate change, resulting from human activities, is occurring all around us. It can be seen in the temperature record, in sea level rise and in the seasonal greening of landscapes. The impacts are measurable in changing frequency of extremes, in impacts on heat waves, and in the nutritional value of some crops. Not accepting the science prevents the planning that minimizes risk and would help build resilience. We are currently choosing to be more vulnerable than we need to be in the future and that is stupid.

60 Julienne Stroeve

My views changed as I studied the emerging data. With record low sea-ice extents year after year, it became clear that a significant warming trend was underway.

61 Andrew Weaver

We know that the world is warming, we’ve known that for a long time. We know that much of that warming, in fact the overwhelming majority of that warming, is due to human activity; that is the combustion of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere.

62 Chris Forest

It’s very clear from the observations that the climate system has warmed over the past century, and that these results are then consistent with human causes having forced the climate system over the past century.

63 Pramod Aggarwal

Temperature increases are certainly going to be there, they are significant, and at the minimum they will be 1 and a half degrees Celsius by the end of the century irrespective of global change scenarios, but they could go as high as 4 and a half degrees Celsius by the end of this century, all depending on the trajectory of development in future.

64 Ken Denman

The issue is not a lack of scientific evidence, the issue is the unwillingness of people and governments to act. It seems to defy logic. But a lot of addictions defy logic. Our society is completely addicted to cheap power from fossil fuels.

65 Thomas Stocker

Climate change challenges the two primary resources of humans and ecosystems, land and water. In short, it threatens our planet, our only home.

66 Brian Hoskins

We are performing a very dangerous experiment with our planet, and I don’t want my grandchildren to suffer the consequences of that experiment.

67 Malte Meinshausen

Our habit to produce energy by burning fossil fuels causes global warming. Civil societies and policy makers will have to make a choice about how much climate change will be too much. Currently, the international community regards 2ºC as such a level, which is not safe, but which might prevent many of the more dramatic impacts.

68 Corinne Le Quéré

The human influence on climate change is clear and dominant. The atmosphere and oceans are warming, the snow cover is shrinking, the Arctic sea ice is melting, sea level is rising, the oceans are acidifying, and some extreme events have increased. CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels need to substantially decrease to limit climate change.

69 James White

We live on a water planet. What that means in practical terms is that it takes decades or more for the earth to heat up, or cool off, as greenhouse gases increase or decrease. So the greenhouse gases that we add, our kids will have to deal with, and they do their kids will have to deal with, and so on. This will continue until one generation breaks the cycle by placing more value on long term benefits for their kids instead of short term profits for themselves.

70 Scott Denning

We expect climate to be warmer in the future than in the past because we know that greenhouse gases absorb and then re-emit thermal radiation. As people around the world burn more and more fossil fuels, concentrations of greenhouse gases increase, so that solar energy accumulates under the extra absorbing gas.

71 David Archer

Each ton of coal that we burn leaves CO2 gas in the atmosphere. The CO2 coming from a quarter of that ton will still be affecting the climate one thousand years from now, at the start of the next millennium.

72 Richard Somerville

If the world as a whole continues to procrastinate throughout the current decade, allowing emissions to continue to increase year after year, then it will almost certainly have lost the opportunity to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Instead, our children and their descendants, and ultimately all living things, will be faced with the consequences of more severe climate disruption

73 Josh Willis

We can’t reverse these changes. If we wreck our climate, we’re stuck with it for a thousand years.

74 Philip Mote

Global warming refers to an increase in the planet’s average temperature, and there’s no question that that’s happened over the last 100 years. Over the last 50 years, it’s increasingly clear that that warming, the more recent warming, is because of human activities.

75 John Mitchell

It’s very simple, it’s simple laws of physics, it’s well established laws of physics. More greenhouse gases, more warming.

76 Donald Wuebbles

We know that the climate is changing. It’s not just that the earth is warming, it’s many other aspects going on. Precipitation patterns are changing and other aspects. We have clear evidence that the basis for those changes is because of human activities, and particularly the emissions of carbon dioxide and some other gases and particles that are in the atmosphere that are causing a forcing on the climate system that is driving that change.

77 James McCarthy

All the professional societies of climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers that have ever looked at this problem have made very consistent statements that climate is changing, it’s changing in unusual ways, and the only way that change can be explained is as a result of human activities.

78 Sarah Das

We understand the physical processes, we know that climate on the planet has always been changing, and we understand that the changes we are experiencing now, a large component of that is caused by human activity.

79 Mark Cochrane

Anthopogenic greenhouse warming is the only scientific theory that accurately explains what is occuring. We’ve had over 100 years of scientists trying to prove this theory wrong, and there is close to unanimous scientific agreement on this as you’re ever going to find, with at least 97% consensus among scientists who actually work on the subject.

80 Peter Hildebrand

I think that the debate is happening around the world. It’s not a debate, though, in the science community. There’s no debate at all there. The scientists know that human influences are creating greenhouse gases and these are warming the earth.

81 Susan Solomon

As we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we’re creating warming that would last more than a thousand years – even if we suddenly stopped emitting.

82 Ulrike Lohmann

The IPCC report states very clearly that humans are the main cause for global warming. There is therefore no longer an excuse to not act and to thereby endanger the lives of future generations.

83 John Fasullo

For many global warming means an increase in Earth’s surface temperature. But anthropogenic climate change also entails a warming of oceans, a moistening of the atmosphere, and an increase in sea level. All are the result of the alteration of the natural flow of energy through the climate system by human activities.

84 Jim Salinger

A third of the permanent snow and ice of New Zealand’s Southern Alps has now disappeared in the last three decades, along with 9000 cubic kilometres of glacier ice from the mountain glaciers of the world. With another 2 to 3°C of warming these glaciers will be about 10% of what we had a century ago – far less than the ice cover over thousands of millenia. Is this the world we want?

85 Sylvia Earle

An ice-free Arctic Ocean may happen in this century. That’s bad news for the polar bears. That’s bad news for us too. Excess carbon dioxide is not only driving global warming, it’s also changing ocean chemistry, making the sea more acidic. That’s bad news for coral reefs and oxygen-producing plankton. Also it’s bad news for us.

86 Myles Allen

Back at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we had around 3-4 trillion tonnes, that’s 3-4 thousand billion tonnes of fossil carbon sitting underground waiting to be dug up and burned to power the Industrial Revolution. Over the past 250 years, we’ve dug up and burned about half a trillion tonnes. Over the next 35 years, at the current rate, the way things are going, we’ll burn the next half trillion tonnes and the next half trillion tonnes after that will take us over 2°.

87 James Byrne

Current reserves of fossil fuels are five times more than we can afford to burn if we want to keep global warming to less than 2°C; and we have to keep global warming below 2°C.

88 Anders Levermann

There are not many human activities whose impact can reasonably be predicted decades, centuries, or even millennia in advance. The fallout from nuclear waste is one; humans’ contribution to global warming through greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, and its impact on rising sea levels, is another.

89 Wally Broecker

One of the main drivers of ice ages was the CO2 content in the air. When the CO2 was lower it got plenty colder. So, as we add CO2 it’s going to get a lot warmer. There can be a question about how big the warming will be, but there’s no doubt in my mind that warming has occurred.

90 Gifford Miller

The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is. This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

91 Michael Oppenheimer

We know that greenhouse gases trap heat that would otherwise escape into space and that their build-up will inevitably warm Earth. We know that Earth is warmer than it was a century ago and we know that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

92 Richard Pancost

What we understand well is that humans have increased atmospheric CO2 and that has caused and will continue to cause global warming. There are uncertainties in exactly how temperature and sea level will rise. And there is uncertainty regarding its impacts, especially on food and water security. But such uncertainty is a cause for action, not inaction.

93 Peter Cox

Scientists are like cats, we are not herdable, ask any University! We don’t like to agree, in fact we are motivated by not agreeing, so how could we possibly get to the point where we can agree? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel of Cat Control? No it’s not! Part of the reason we agree is because some of it’s obvious. It’s been obvious for a long time.

94 Glen MacDonald

The evidence is now overwhelming that by and large the warming we are seeing has an anthropogenic cause.

95 Katrin Meissner

Let’s imagine we decide to stop all fossil fuel emissions today, worldwide, forever… the climate will not immediately jump back to where it was before human intervention. The longer we wait, the more warming we will be committed to. We are now setting the course for our immediate future and for generations to come. We are more vulnerable than most of us realise.

96 Alan Robock

If you ask climate scientists, the ones that publish in the journals, the ones that do the research, the ones that understand the science, more than 97 percent of them agree that humans are the main cause of global warming. And so, by saying that other people who claim to be scientists don’t agree, or by having debates between one global warming denier and one climate scientist, it makes it seem like there’s a much stronger argument on the side of the deniers.

97 Greg Holland

…the overwhelming consensus is that the globe is warming. The overwhelming consensus is that this is making changes to severe weather and rare events, be it heavy rainfall, droughts, tropical cyclones or whatever.

97% of people agree with someone just to shut them up! lol