The Earth is Warming

Global Warming is a FACT (as the name of our organization suggests):

• 17,000 thermometers around the world show a current .31 F per decade increase in surface temperature¹
• The Earth is absorbing .85 watts per sq yard more than it is radiating to space (and as we add CO2, this amount increases)²
• The oceans are rising 1.27 mm per year over the past 150 years, but up to 3 mm/year in the past decade³
• Since the Industrial Revolution, Earth has warmed 1.13F, most of which has occurred in the past few decades (see below)⁴

The different colored lines represent temperature records derived from indirect means e.g. tree rings, ice cores etc. The black line is direct observation.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record (I recognize that wikipedia is not truly a scientific source, but this image is very good for depicting the different temperature data sources).

Other means of detecting recent climate change

Here are some of the recent and current changes that demonstrate the fact that the Earth is warming:

1. In 2004, Greenland glaciers were found to be melting 10x faster than previously thought
2. Resources that support humanity
• Australian rain pattern shift has caused buried saltbeds to rise to surface, rendering former farming land useless
• Shift to far drier Australian climate has cut water supply for the city of Perth (pop. 1.3 million) in half, forcing them to take water from nearby nature reserves and killing endangered species
• Water supply of the U.S. West depends on mountain snow, which has been declining (as the peaks warm and maintain a smaller and smaller snowpack)
3. Lake Tanganyika, Africa: warming has kept lake's upper levels warmer (colder water sinks), preventing sufficient mixing to bring nutrients from below to the surface and oxygen from the surface to the depths, killing much of the life within

"I don't believe..."

Thus, when people say "I dont believe in Global Warming," they are not very well-informed, because Global Warming is an observable fact--Earth is getting warmer. The question, then, is this: How much of this warming is due to human activity?

So why is the Earth warming? Check out the Greenhouse Effect.

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