Denying daunting impacts of global warming 'just foolishness', says US scientist

Washington, Apr 2 (ANI): One of the world's most respected and leading senior scientists has asserted that current denial about the basic intimidating realities of manmade global warming is "just foolishness."

Peter Raven also reported that the rest of the world has now "pretty well given up" on its hope for U.S. leadership in tackling global climate change.

His assessment has reinforced the findings at the recent global climate summit in Durban, South Africa, that the vigorous anti-climate science movement in the United States has considerably damaged American prestige among European leaders who are struggling to deal with the daunting impacts of global warming, ABC News reported.

Raven, co-inventor in 1964, along with biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, of the bedrock concept of co-evolution, has long been a trusted adviser of American presidents, many other heads of state and government, religious leaders comprising popes, and countless congressional, academic and scientific leaders in the United States and across the world.

When being asked about what he thought regarding the increasing claims of some parties in the United States that the science and alarm about manmade global warming was "a hoax" or greatly overblown, he responded patiently, "Oh, it's just foolishness."

"It's not a matter of conjecture anymore," he said.

"Climate change is the most serious challenge probably that the human race has ever confronted," he added.

Raven summarized the almost unanimous understanding of the world's climate scientists and other responsible experts about the great upheavals manmade global warming is now producing.

"There is virtually unanimous consensus among the world's scientists who work in the area that human beings are the major reason that this is so (the world's average temperature rising)," wrote Raven from London.

"Because, just as first noted by the Swedish chemist Arrhenius in 1895, when you add more carbon dioxide or other co-called greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, you make it warmer."

Academic and scientific surveys have constantly confirmed this view among the world's climate scientists.

It found that "97-98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field ... supported the basic tenets of ACC (manmade global warming) established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

It reported that "the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of (those tenets of climate change) are substantially below that of the convinced researchers."

"Two years ago," Raven added, "the world was hoping for U.S. leadership on this question, global climate change, and now it has pretty well given up, with us as the only hold-out nation on the science." (ANI)