by Edward Milford
26. May 2010 08:01
Recent opinion polls, both in the UK and elsewhere, have shown that more people now doubt that global warming is happening than a couple of years ago. The flurry of controversy about email records, referred to as these things must be as ‘Climategate’, has certainly sown the seeds of doubt in some people’s minds.
Nature, of course, is not influenced by what any one thinks, or wants to think. The authoritative National Climatic Data Center in the US, part of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, itself part of the US Department of Commerce) has released their report on the State of the Climate for April 2010. It’s pretty sobering: globally, April 2010 was the warmest April on record, 0.76 oC warmer than the 20th century average; this is the 34th consecutive April warmer than the 20th century average; January-April 2010 is cumulatively the warmest year on record.
Unfortunately, I suspect that this won’t get nearly as much attention as a single misquoted number in the IPCC report, and many people will carry on believing what they want to believe – that this isn’t really happening. Why they want to do that, of course, is explored in Clive Hamilton’s chilling ‘Requiem for a Species’.
