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Climate Denial at WWU

Don EasterbrookA geology professor emeritus at Western Washington University, Don J. Easterbrook, edited Evidence-Based Climate Science a book which contends that increased CO2 emissions aren’t the cause of climate change. Dr. Easterbrook has appeared with Glenn Beck and been interviewed for the New York Times.
Dr. Easterbrook’s most recent essay appears on the blog Watts Up.   In this post he takes on the National Climate Assessment and says the data do not fit the NCA claims.
I have not read the whole thing but one bit of text hit me a very weird:
“The CO2 composition of the atmosphere then was about 0.030 %. The CO2 composition of the atmosphere recently reached 0.04%, a total increase of only 0.010% since ~1950. But the period of ‘global warming didn’t begin until 1978 when CO2 made up 0.034% of the atmospheric, so that’s an increase of only 0.006%. ’ That’s about as close to nothing as you can get, and even if you double or triple it, you still have close to nothing!”
A change from 0.030 % to 0.040 %  is a HUGE change,  the normal way a scientist would express this as a change of 125%!   Easterbrook is either trying to  mislead his (non scientist) readers or he is badly in need of a statistics course.
Here is an example from every day life.  If your weight increased from 160 pounds to 200 pounds would that suggest you were eating too much?

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Posted 18 May 2014 by theaveeditor in America, Schools & Colleges

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