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By Julia Conley
According to polls, most Americans now recognize the consensus of the scientific community that human activity is fueling the climate crisis – but for those who are still unconvinced of the conclusion drawn by 97% of climatologists, a new study is even more precise.
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have discovered that the information available can now be categorized as "five sigma" – a standard of the scientific community, which means that there is a chance on one million that the same data is observable if humans did not cause global warming through activities such as fossil fuel extraction The classification represents a level of certainty "reference".
"It's wrong to say that scientists ignore the cause of climate change," said Benjamin Santer, who was leading the study, to Reuters. "We do."
Scientists have applied the same "five sigma" measure to research confirming the existence of the subatomic particle of the Higgs boson in 2012, a result that has been received with the applause of the scientific community and the press.
The report, which was published in Nature Climate Change, builds on the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which revealed that it was "extremely likely" that human beings are at the root of the climate crisis – with a 95 percent chance.
In recent years, although President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers have attempted to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global warming and the climate crisis, the American public has more and more trusted scientists.
In a survey conducted in 2018 by Yale's climate change communication program, 62% of Americans thought that climate change was man-made, compared to only 47% who believed it five years ago.
The Nature Study on Climate Change also follows reports that melting of Antarctic ice and ocean warming are occurring much faster than expected; that the last four years have been the hottest ever recorded; and that global warming could lead to the disappearance of sky clouds at the next generation, resulting in a 14.4 ° Fahrenheit temperature rise.
"Humanity can not afford to ignore such clear signals," wrote the authors of the most recent study in Nature Climate Change.
Republished with the permission of our media associate, Common Dreams.
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