A friend examines Figure 21.4 and argues that a temperature increase of about 0.7oC in the last 150 years is so small that global warming is certainly insignificant and perhaps even nonexistent. What is your response?
What will be an ideal response?
Although the total temperature change seems very small (0.7oC in 150 years), we can definitely say that it is real because the increase is larger than the uncertainty in the measurements and the process of averaging temperatures from many locations to determine a global average. It is seen to be significant when compared to proxy temperature reconstructions in Figure 21.16, which shows that a 0.7oC change in any 150-year period is highly unlikely at anytime in the last 1000 years.
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A. a tool-kit; specific tools B. productive policies; some policies C. inflexible; incentives to protect endangered species D. flexible; the command-and-control approach
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