Evidence of humanity’s cause of global climate change through atmospheric warming has reached a gold standard of certainty, said researchers in a commentary in the journal Nature Climate Change published Monday.
Using a statistical analysis common in particle physics and employed in detecting the elusive Higgs Boson, scientists evaluated volumes of satellite data. The implications are that there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the pattern of atmospheric heating is not the result of human activity.
“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” study lead author Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told Reuters. “We do.”
“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals” were the words with which the paper concluded. However, people are persistent. At an industry event Tuesday, Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company Aramco, said that demand for oil will increase significantly, according to a separate Reuters report.
“Our industry faces a crisis of perception with multiple stakeholders,” Nasser reportedly said. “Our traditional qualities of ample, reliable and affordable supply are not enough to meet society’s expectations today.”
Nasser also said that demands to run the world’s energy needs on something other than oil “are not based on logic and facts, and are formed mostly in response to pressure and hype.”
The Green New Deal has shown the dynamics of urgent need and reluctance to embrace it. The extremely ambitious plan has seen a tepid public response from top Democrats and outright opposition from many Republicans.