Climate change expert warns of global warming

Raymond Bradley did not want to be confused with Ray Bradbury, a famous 20th-century fiction writer. 

“I’m not Ray Bradbury talking about science fiction. I’m Ray Bradley talking about scientific facts,” he said. 

Bradley delivered the lecture “The Science and Politics of Global Warming” to a few hundred community members and university students at the Carnegie Lecture Hall Wednesday. Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, was the second speaker of the University Honors College Climate Change Series. 

The series, designed to educate students and staff about energy sources and consumption, began this past spring with an inaugural lecture given by climate-change expert, author and blogger Joseph Romm. 

Edward Stricker, Dean of the University Honors College, said the underlying premise of the series is to educate students about the severity of climate change and the basic science of the issue. 

“We believe that all of us here and all of us who aren’t here today have to understand these things better in order to deal effectively with the problems that are facing us,” he said. 

Bradley delivered scientific evidence supporting the threat of global warming and presented graphs that charted the atmospheric carbon dioxide at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observatory in Mauna Loa, Hawaii. 

Bradley explained that humans are releasing fossil fuels back into the atmosphere at a rate much faster than it took those plants and animals to remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

“We have a relentless rise in the level of greenhouse gasses. That is the contribution from the fossil fuel burning,” he said. “The explosive return of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is the fundamental problem that we face.”

Stricker said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report highlighted the severity of global warming’s threat this past week.

This assessment is a revision of a report that was previously issued by the panel, a group of the world’s experts on the subject.

While the older version of the report noted that it was very likely that anthropogenic factors are the main cause of greenhouse gas emission, the updated report reads that it is not only very likely, but extremely likely, that human influence has been the dominant cause of alterations to our climate. 

Bradley said that the panel’s conclusions have been supported and endorsed by every major scientific organization. He then asked the audience why the U.S. government failed to take action.

Bradley provided examples of various political figures who have publicly denounced the existence of global warming. 

He noted that former Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum said global warming is an excuse for the left to increase government control and Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said scientists are intentionally misleading the public”

“They obviously haven’t read the last five reports,” Bradley said. 

Although Bradley drew on the example of Mauna Loa, he said that the same rise in levels of carbon dioxide can be seen almost anywhere on the planet. 

In addition to the rise in carbon dioxide, Bradley said that there has also been a rise in temperatures over the last 130 years. These rising temperatures are seen in both the atmosphere and the ocean. 

Bradley said that while knowledge of greenhouse gases’ radiative effect on the atmosphere has circulated for 200 years, more recent technologies allow for computer models to more effectively observe changes and create simulations.

He added that these computer models have shown that polar ice has both receded in area and thinned. Although the arctic has a nearly nonexistent population, it serves as a cooling mechanism for the rest of our planet and is therefore an extremely relevant problem. 

Steven Turetsky, a senior economics and biology major, said that he is concerned about the future that awaits him. 

“It’s important to be as informed and educated in the facts as possible, since we live in a biased and media-driven society that tends to mold our opinions for us,” he said.