Statement of Prof. Roger Pielke Sr. of
Colorado State University on climate change and global warming |
see original here
1.
The needed focus for the study of climate change and variability is on the
regional and local scales. Global and zonally-averaged climate metrics would
only be important to the extent that they provide useful information on these
space scales.
2.
Global and zonally-averaged surface temperature trend assessments, besides
having major difficulties in terms of how this metric is diagnosed and analyzed,
do not provide significant information on climate change and variability on the
regional and local scales.
3.
Global warming is not equivalent to climate change. Significant, societally
important climate change, due to both natural- and human- climate forcings, can
occur without any global warming or cooling.
4.
The spatial pattern of ocean heat content change is the appropriate metric to
assess climate system heat changes including global warming.
5.
In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the
IPCC Reports, the CCSP Report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends,
and the U.S. National Assessment have overstated the role of the radiative
effect of the anthropogenic increase of CO2 relative to the role of the
diversity of other human climate climate forcing on global warming, and more
generally, on climate variability and change.
6.
Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated skill at predicting
climate change and variability on multi-decadal time scales.
7.
Attempts to significantly influence regional and local-scale climate based on
controlling CO2 emissions alone is an inadequate policy for this purpose.
8.
A vulnerability paradigm, focused on regional and local societal and
environmental resources of importance, is a more inclusive, useful, and
scientifically robust framework to interact with policymakers, than is the focus
on global multi-decadal climate predictions which are downscaled to the regional
and local scales. The vulnerability paradigm permits the evaluation of the
entire spectrum of risks associated with different social and environmental
threats, including climate variability and change.