Global Warming the Columbia Encyclopedia

Global Warming

The Columbia Encyclopedia defines global warming as the gradual increase of the temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere due to the increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution (Global pp).

Visible, shortwave light comes from the sun to the earth, passing unimpeded through a blanket of thermal, or greenhouse, gases composed largely of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone" (Global pp).

In the April 22, 2005 issue of Science, Eli Kintisch reports that the United States government enlisted an outspoken skeptic of global warming in a legal fight with environmental groups over U.S. funding for overseas energy projects (Kintisch pp). This move angered several prominent climate researchers who claim the government's arguments "fly in the face of scientific consensus about both the causes and possible consequences of global warming" (Kintisch pp). The Justice Department argues that "the basic connection between human induced greenhouse gas emissions and observed climate itself has not been established," and boots its case with a 41-page statement from David Legates, head of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware, Newark, who says, "Significant questions still remain as to [whether] this... rise in air temperature can be attributed to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gas concentrations" (Kintisch pp). Thomas Wigley, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, say that Legates's arguments on solar variability are "standard skeptic crap" that has been discredited (Kintisch pp).

In the April 01, 1995 issue of The Energy Journal, Emily Moran reports that recognition of the effect of warming on energy consumption is but one of the many possible impacts of global warming, and concludes that more research on quantifying the impacts of global warming on issues such as ecosystems, human health, and water supplies is only just beginning, yet from the narrow viewpoint of energy usage, global warming could reduce rather than increase costs to the U.S. economy (Moran pp).

James M. Lindsay reports in the September 22, 2001 issue of the Brookings Review that uncertainty about the causes and consequences of global warming greatly shapes the debate over climate change, thus it is difficult to motivate countries to act when no one knows whether the problem is big or small, imminent or distant (Lindsay pp). According to Lindsay, the United States, which has only 5% of the world's population emits roughly 25% of its heat-trapping gases, therefore few Americans list global warming as a top environmental concern (Lindsay pp).

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, approximately 6.6 toms of greenhouse gases are emitted per person every year in the United States, and that emissions per person increased 3.7% between 1990 and 1997 (Global1 pp). Eighty-two percent of these emissions are from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power cars (Global1 pp).