WASHINGTON - An upbeat tone reigned over the annual Environmental Sciences Conference at the Foundation Towards Reality summit in Washington D.C. this past week, where scientists announced that after a long period of controversy, it has been finally, conclusively proven that human activity is a primary cause of global climate change. "Anthropogenic" (human-caused) climate change is a reality.
"The news couldn't be better," enthused Dr. Lovell 'Lovey' Bubbage, chairman of the Research Sciences Institute Into Ecology, and keynote speaker at the conference. "A third-grade student knows that left to its own courses, Earth has been ping-ponging from global melt to global freeze and back again, all through its natural history. Now, finally, we know humanity has the power to affect this cycle."
Dr. Keanu Harrington of the Climate Studies Group elaborates: "As you know, we're in an ice age right now. The presence of year-round polar ice, by definition - that's an ice age. So we're either in a temporary warmer pocket - a thaw - within the current ice age to-be-resumed, or else we're at the tail end and coming out of the now-passing ice age. Either of these natural states spells bad news for humanity! We don't like nature like that. Nature embraces extremes: hot muggy winters with Wyoming submerged, all the way to nasty snowy summers with ice sheets reaching to Ohio. That's not how humanity likes nature. We want nice frosty caps of polar ice, wide temperate zones with four seasons to grow crops and build cities in, and a tropical belt around the middle for vacations."
But does humanity have as much influence as we need? Can we arrest nature at that happy medium, and keep it from going to its usual hot and cold extremes? "That has now become the question," notes natural historian and theoretical meteorologist Jeddo Phepps. "For too long, the naysayers were telling us we were helpless. Telling us no, humanity doesn't have this influence on the climate. Well that dismal picture is considerably brighter now! We know for an absolute fact: humanity does have influence, strong influence. With that controversy settled, we can focus our research and attention on understanding that influence. Directing it. We've proven dozens of mechanisms by which we do definitely affect the climate, and more are coming into view all the time. Some factors increase global temperature, others reduce it. Understanding these mechanisms is the only difference between anthropogenic climate change - and anthropogenic climate control."
What will this mean to the global warming debate going forward? "Well, it's over," says Dr. Abby McFey, summing up. "After years of political controversy and wrangling over whether we can affect climate, finally we can stop wasting time and money studying what-if, and put that funding towards how-to. With all the climate-changing tools we've discovered already, there's no reason careful research and application can't get the climate under control within this century."
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