The dodgiest of dossiers – Dr Vincent Gauci reacts to Daily Express

Further to David Humphrey’s post  “Is Global Warming Natural?”, Dr Vincent Gauci also offers reaction to today’s Express article…

“The Express’ lead story reports on the dodgiest of dossiers produced by the European Foundation.  Records show that there are big natural changes over a range of time scales that are closely related to observable and predictable changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun and are associated with the atmospheric content of greenhouses gases (as recorded in ice core bubbles). 

“Recent measured increases in temperature can be placed against this geological context of natural cycles to see if the changes fit the trend.  They don’t. In fact they deviate markedly from these well established cycles.  So climate change IS real.

“And this is where models come in. Climate models recreate Earth’s climate in a computer from the ground up, incorporating ocean currents, many layers within the atmosphere, the composition of the atmosphere. These models create numerical simulations of climate over time.  To see how well they work you can compare them against measurements – recent and ancient.  The results are rather good and recent climate warming can only be recreated in the models if the huge emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane from human activity are included in simulations.

“All this evidence tells us that human caused climate change is taking place. The evidence base is large, different research groups show similar results using different models – there really is a scientific consensus.

“To see the holes in the climate change denier arguments for yourself go to www.realclimate.org.”