While the corporate media decides to make federal cases out of random e-mails between individual climate scientists, here are some of the basic facts on climate change.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/what_we_know_and_how_we_know_i.html
The ongoing assault on climate science orchestrated by anti-regulation ideologues and supported by oil and coal companies has sown seeds of doubt by magnifying minor missteps by climate scientists and distorting the meaning of Washington DC’s “snowpocalypse.” None of this changes the facts about global warming. So what do we know, and how do we know it?
We know our climate is changing in ways that threaten us all. We know we can curb global warming by reducing carbon pollution. And we know that doing so will make our economy stronger and our country more secure.
That's what we know; here's how we know it.
The past decade was the hottest on record. For the years 2000-2009, the average global temperature was 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about 1 degree higher than the 20th-Century average, NOAA reported in January.
NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration not a political interest group. And when it comes to atmospheric conditions, there is no more credible institution anywhere in the world. Period.
Arctic ice is melting. A third of the perennial ice has vanished in just 30 years. Last September, Arctic sea ice fell to 2 million square miles - down from 3 million square miles in the summer of 1980. We've lost an area of sea ice equal to the entire United States east of the Mississippi according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
We know that from photographs taken by military and space program satellite that pass over the Arctic Circle 14 times every day.