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Write a critique of the following text: I think any rational response to climate change involves first knowing what the facts and evidence are. That is the province of science. There are many…

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Write a critique of the following text:

I think any rational response to climate change involves first knowing what the facts and evidence are. That is the province of science. There are many indicators measured globally over many decades that show that the Earth's climate is warming. All the indicators expected to increase in a warming world are increasing, and all those expected to decrease in a warming world are decreasing. It's definitely warming. It's not a hoax. We observe it and measure it. The atmosphere is warming. So is the ocean. Sea level is rising. Ice sheets and glaciers and snow cover are shrinking. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is increasing. Climate change is real and serious. It's not a remote threat for the distant future. It's here and now.

It's us. We've done the detective work. Just as wildfire experts can say whether a fire was caused by lightning, or by a campfire accidentally left burning, or by arson, we can show what is now causing the world to warm. Yes, some past climate change was natural, like ice ages coming and going, but the warming we have observed in recent decades is clearly caused by human activities. The evidence for that is overwhelming.

We now know what paces the beginnings and ends of ice ages. It is slow changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun, that alter how sunlight is distributed over the surface of the Earth. We understand these changes in the orbit, and they take thousands of years to have an effect. They cannot possibly produce the climate changes that we observe occurring in just a few decades. Similarly, we can rule out other natural processes, such as changes in the energy in sunlight. They are quantitatively too small. Human activities, such as burning coal and oil and natural gas, are the dominant cause of the rapid climate change we now observe.

It hasn't stopped. The warming is still continuing. We have good estimates of the global average temperature of the Earth's surface from 1880 until the present; 1880 is about the time when we first had enough good thermometers located in enough places around the Earth to enable us to calculate a meaningful global average. The modern data is the most accurate. During about the last 50 years, from the 1970s until now, we know there has been a warming of about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. All the warmest years on record are recent years.

The heat is mainly in the sea. Over 90 percent of the heat added to the climate system is in the oceans. How do we measure the heat stored in the ocean? That's a good question, and it has a fascinating answer. ...

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