New and events of the Philadelphia Bar Asso.
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The cause is indisputably human activity, specifically, unrelenting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels: oil, natural gas and coal. The United States for many years led the world in total annual greenhouse gas emissions, but it has been passed by China with India close behind. So we, as a world of people, must face the impending and probably existential problem of arresting climate change and preserving the biosphere. Don't take it from me. Take it from a scientist, Richard Alley, Ph.D., of Penn State University, who explained the scientific consensus on climate change at a Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor's Forum to a capacity crowd at bar headquarters on Nov. 6. Dr. Alley is a glaciologist who is widely credited with showing that the earth has experienced abrupt climate change in the past – and likely will again, based on his study of ice cores from Greenland and West Antarctica. Dr. Alley is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, and has worked with both organizations on published reports explaining the consensus on climate change. He served as one of the authors on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate M ore than 25 years have passed since NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified in Congress that the Earth was warmer in 1988 than at any time recorded in history, and that "global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect." Since then, the science of climate change has been confirmed and re-confirmed. All of the major scientific organizations worldwide have reached the same conclusion. Global air temperatures are rising and there will be significant effect on the planet, none of it good, much of it unknown, and it has already begun. 18 the philadelphia lawyer Winter 2015 B y S T E V E H A R V E y ClIMAte ChA tIMe tO ACt