This is about the best response that I've seen to the whole CRU hacked e-mails scandal, which the right-wing is just gobbling up like a free bag of chips:
http://www.newscientist.com/article...imate-conspiracy-in-hacked-emails.html?page=3
Excerpt:
"Forget about the temperature records compiled by researchers such as those whose emails were hacked. Next spring, go out into your garden or the nearby countryside and note when the leaves unfold, when flowers bloom, when migrating birds arrive and so on. Compare your findings with historical records, where available, and you'll probably find spring is coming days, even weeks earlier than a few decades ago.
You can't fake spring coming earlier, or trees growing higher up on mountains, or glaciers retreating for kilometres up valleys, or shrinking ice cover in the Arctic, or birds changing their migration times, or permafrost melting in Alaska, or the tropics expanding, or ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula breaking up, or peak river flow occurring earlier in summer because of earlier snowmelt, or sea level rising faster and faster, or any of the thousands of similar examples.
None of these observations by themselves prove the world is warming; they could simply be regional effects, for instance. But put all the data from around the world together, and you have overwhelming evidence of a long-term warming trend.
We know greenhouse gases are the main cause of warming
There are many ways, theoretically, to warm a planet. Orbital changes might bring it closer to its star. The star itself might brighten. The planet's reflectivity – albedo – can change if white ice is replaced by darker vegetation or water. Changes in composition of the atmosphere can trap more heat, and so on.
It could even be that Earth isn't really warming overall, just that there has been a transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere.
Researchers have to look at all of these factors. And they have. Direct measurements since the 1970s make it certain, for instance, that neither the sun's fluctuating brightness nor changes in the number of cosmic rays hitting Earth are responsible for the recent warming. Similarly, direct measurements over the past century show that the oceans have warmed dramatically. The planet as a whole is getting warmer."
http://www.newscientist.com/article...imate-conspiracy-in-hacked-emails.html?page=3
Excerpt:
"Forget about the temperature records compiled by researchers such as those whose emails were hacked. Next spring, go out into your garden or the nearby countryside and note when the leaves unfold, when flowers bloom, when migrating birds arrive and so on. Compare your findings with historical records, where available, and you'll probably find spring is coming days, even weeks earlier than a few decades ago.
You can't fake spring coming earlier, or trees growing higher up on mountains, or glaciers retreating for kilometres up valleys, or shrinking ice cover in the Arctic, or birds changing their migration times, or permafrost melting in Alaska, or the tropics expanding, or ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula breaking up, or peak river flow occurring earlier in summer because of earlier snowmelt, or sea level rising faster and faster, or any of the thousands of similar examples.
None of these observations by themselves prove the world is warming; they could simply be regional effects, for instance. But put all the data from around the world together, and you have overwhelming evidence of a long-term warming trend.
We know greenhouse gases are the main cause of warming
There are many ways, theoretically, to warm a planet. Orbital changes might bring it closer to its star. The star itself might brighten. The planet's reflectivity – albedo – can change if white ice is replaced by darker vegetation or water. Changes in composition of the atmosphere can trap more heat, and so on.
It could even be that Earth isn't really warming overall, just that there has been a transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere.
Researchers have to look at all of these factors. And they have. Direct measurements since the 1970s make it certain, for instance, that neither the sun's fluctuating brightness nor changes in the number of cosmic rays hitting Earth are responsible for the recent warming. Similarly, direct measurements over the past century show that the oceans have warmed dramatically. The planet as a whole is getting warmer."
