Last month, community education instructor Rolf Westgard made false statements in the Minnesota Daily about the Earth’s climate. Mr. Westgard claimed that there has been no global warming this century. As a climate scientist myself, I find this laughable.
There are four organizations that record global temperatures. They are NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Met Office Hadley Centre in England and the Japan Meteorological Agency. Each of these organizations puts its temperature data online — readers can easily find them. If you look at NASA, you will find that the hottest year ever recorded (since approximately 1880) was 2014.
The surface air temperature in the U.S. has increased about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 2000. Currently, 2015 is set to break the prior record. The first four months this year are the hottest first four months ever recorded. The May temperature information, to be released in about a week, will break another record.
So Mr. Westgard’s statements are nonsense. I am providing real references so that readers can check for themselves. Climate change is real; we can see it clearly in the data. Opinion pages should be places where people can share opinions, even if they are confrontational. On the other hand, when false statements are made that mislead readers, it tarnishes the public discourse in a way that does a disservice to this paper.
