A leaked draft of the U.N.’s latest climate assessment rates the probability that human action is warming the planet as a near certainty. Six years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with 90 percent certainty that human activity has caused most of the planet’s warming over the past half-century. This year’s draft raises the probability to 95 percent.
The small cadre of committed skeptics likely will dismiss the latest finding as yet another lie by a vast conspiracy bent on imposing one-world government. Two decades ago that might have been a defensible position. Today it is laughable.
Just look at how hard the Obama administration has tried to keep domestic spying by the NSA secret — and how little success it has had doing so. The NSA’s activities are highly classified. The data on climate, by contrast, are open to scrutiny by anyone, which should make exposing any falsehoods a piece of cake. Yet during the past two decades the case for the anthropogenic thesis has grown stronger — not weaker. The latest assessment by the world’s best scientific minds says it has grown stronger still. It is long past time to stop debating the fact of global warming and start debating how to deal with it.
