A study published last weekend on Nature Climate Change claims to give the lie to the notion that if the world is warming, it’s not our fault.
With the kind of certainty that will send the Heartland Institute reaching for Plan C (“the world should focus on mitigation”), the study, The study, Human-induced global ocean warming on multidecadal timescales, ends with the bald factual statement: “We have identified a human-induced fingerprint in observed estimates of upper-ocean warming on multidecadal timescales”.
Alternatively, as oceanographer Professor Nathan Bindoff of the University of Tasmania put it speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “No matter how you look at it, we did it”.
The study, with inputs from Australia, Japan, India and the United States, found that natural variability in ocean temperatures could only account for ten percent of the observed rise – at most. Event the “noise” created by short-term variability would have to be twice as great as is observed to make any change to the study’s results.
“Although we performed a series of tests to account for the impact of various uncertainties, we found no evidence that simultaneous warming of the upper layers of all seven seas can be explained by natural climate variability alone. Humans have played a dominant role,” said Lawrence Livermore climate scientist Peter Gleckler.