Page 80 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 3: Information Products

American Meteorological Society Notes
There is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the Earth’s surface, averaged over
the entire globe, has been increasing in the past 200 years. There is also clear evidence that the
abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased over the same period. In the past
decade, significant progress has been made toward a better understanding of the climate system and
toward improved projections of long-term climate change... Human activities have become a major
source of environmental change. Of great urgency are the climate consequences of the increasing
atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases... Because greenhouse gases continue to increase, we
are, in effect, conducting a global climate experiment, neither planned nor controlled, the results of
which may present unprecedented challenges to our wisdom and foresight as well as have significant
impacts on our natural and societal systems.
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society has issued a Statement on Climate Change,
wherein they conclude:
Global climate change and global warming are real and observable ... It is highly likely that those
human activities that have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have
been largely responsible for the observed warming since 1950. The warming associated with increases
in greenhouse gases originating from human activity is called the enhanced greenhouse effect. The
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by more than 30% since the start of the
industrial age and is higher now than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years. This increase is
a direct result of burning fossil fuels, broad-scale deforestation and other human activity.”

Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences

In November 2005, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) issued
a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada stating that:
We concur with the climate science assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in 2001 ... We endorse the conclusions of the IPCC assessment that ‘There is new and stronger
evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities’.
... There is increasingly unambiguous evidence of changing climate in Canada and around the world.
There will be increasing impacts of climate change on Canada’s natural ecosystems and on our
socio-economic activities. Advances in climate science since the 2001 IPCC Assessment have provided
more evidence supporting the need for action and development of a strategy for adaptation to
projected changes.

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
In November 2009, a letter to the Canadian Parliament by The Canadian Meteorological and
Oceanographic Society states:
Rigorous international research, including work carried out and supported by the Government of
Canada, reveals that greenhouse gases resulting from human activities contribute to the warming
of the atmosphere and the oceans and constitute a serious risk to the health and safety of our society,
as well as having an impact on all life.

Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
In February 2007, after the release of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, the Royal Meteorological
Society issued an endorsement of the report. In addition to referring to the IPCC as “world’s best
climate scientists”, they stated that climate change is happening as “the result of emissions since
industrialization and we have already set in motion the next 50 years of global warming – what we
do from now on will determine how worse it will get.”

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