WSU News Archive

By Eric Sorensen, WSU science writer

 

 

PULLMAN, Wash.—Washington State University researchers have taken a departure from the regionally focused, applied-science extension publication to write a fact sheet on the science, debate and challenges of global climate change.

 

"This is a topic on which WSU and the body of international research has some clear conclusions,” says Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, associate professor and research leader of WSU’s Biologically Intensive Agriculture and Organic Farming program. "It is a perfect opportunity for WSU to express the larger concept of ‘Extension,’ which can make any work of the university more transparent and useful to the public.”

 

Carpenter-Boggs came up with the idea to produce the fact sheet, which was largely written by Bertie Weddell, an associate in WSU’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources, and Stewart Higgins, a senior scientific assistant at the center with a background in plant ecology, agriculture and climate change. All three have doctoral degrees from WSU.

 

The publication in some ways is a study of how the scientific process works. It lays out what scientists currently know about changes in the Earth’s climate and atmosphere, elements of the debate over its warming, and how science contributes to our knowledge of the phenomenon through observations, experiments, models and supporting evidence. Tables compare projected physical and biological consequences of climate change with evidence that they are already taking place.

 

 "Although some puzzles remain,” the fact sheet concludes, "the consensus of thousands of climate scientists in hundreds of countries worldwide is that the Earth is getting warmer, that human activity is the principal cause of this warming, and that this warming will have serious ecological, health, and economic consequences for the 21st century.”

 

Nearly two of the document’s six pages consist of references to more than 30 scientific reports on the subject.

 

A small section discusses how farming practices might be altered to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming, "but overall our target population was the general public,” says Carpenter-Boggs.

Climate change is a sensitive subject, says Weddell, and the authors tried to address that by first emphasizing "the widespread agreement on many of the basic tenets of climate science”—that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere, for instance, and that climate "has a big influence on where plants and animals can live.”

 

The authors also stress the value of understanding the role of vigorous debate in the scientific process.

 "We hope that the public will not only consider the evidence of climate change presented in the fact sheet,” says Higgins, "but will also come to appreciate the process that leads to the conclusion that our climate is changing.”

 

The WSU Extension "Global Climate Change” fact sheet can be downloaded for free at http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS069E/FS069E.pdf

 

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