Prestigious scientific panel backs global-warming data

After a comprehensive review of climate-change data, the pre-eminent U.S. scientific body found average temperatures on Earth have risen about 1 degree over the past century, a development that “is unprecedented for the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.”

The report from the National Academies of Science also concluded that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.”
Coupled with a report last month from the Bush administration’s Climate Change Science Program that found “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system,” the new study signals a growing acceptance in Washington of widely held scientific views on the causes of global warming.

The academies’ review focused on the controversial “hockey stick” graph, which shows Earth’s temperature rising abruptly to its highest point in 1,000 years after a long period of stability.

The panel dismissed critics’ charges that fraud and error were responsible for the graph’s sharp upward swing, noting many studies had confirmed its essential conclusions in the eight years since it was first published in the journal Nature.

The finding was a rebuke to skeptics and some conservative politicians, who have repeatedly attacked the hockey stick as the work of overzealous scientists determined to shame the government into imposing environmental rules on big business.

Seattle Times