Saturday, January 14, 2017

What Walker's DNR/PSC climate change scrubbers are denying

Just a follow-up to disclosures kicked off on this blog last month about  the scrubbing of climate change information from official State of Wisconsin Public Service Commission and Department of Natural Resources websites - - and especially to this report - - 
the [DNR] website now states the cause of climate change is debatable. Gone are sentences attributing global warming to human activities and rising carbon dioxide levels. Also gone is language saying that scientists agree the Great Lakes region will see longer summers and shorter winters, decreased ice cover and changes in rain and snow patterns if climate change continues... 
Most scientists agree burning fossil fuels has increased greenhouse gases and caused global warming. A 2014 United Nations report found that human influence on climate is clear. The report also found global warming is unequivocal and unprecedented.
Smoke stacks from a factory. 
 - - I want to get into the discussion this information from a posting by the 49-year-old University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute that illustrates the  depth and extent of what's [my interpretation] being denied and ignored:
Wisconsin can expect an increase in extreme heat waves and more frequent droughts in summer. At the same time, severe thunderstorms may double in frequency, increasing the amounts of damage caused by heavy rainfall, flashfloods, hail and strong tornadoes. The winter season is likely to be punctuated with increasingly frequent mid-winter thaws, freezing rains, ice storms and flooding. We may expect heavier snowfalls, especially in the near term, yet the average length of time the ground stays snow-covered and our lakes remain ice-covered will shrink with each decade...
These projections for Wisconsin’s future climate are but a microcosm of the most recent global climate forecast of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC’s 2007 report concluded that “warming of the climate systems is unequivocal” and “sea level rise under warming is inevitable.”
The report presents the consensus findings of nearly 4,000 of the world’s leading experts on climate and climate change, the product of more than 450 authors and 800 contributing authors from universities, environmental organizations and industries throughout the world, whose work was reviewed by 2,500 other scientific experts to ensure that it represented an objective and complete assessment of the latest scientific information available. “Consensus” means general agreement on every finding presented in the report, so as alarming as many of the report’s conclusions are, it is a conservative assessment and most likely understates the problem.


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