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How Serious Is The Global Warming Threat?, Roy W. Spencer

Center for Applied Economics

Global warming is the quintessential environmental scare. While the local effects of litter, chemical contamination, and aerosol pollution had dominated our environmental concerns in the 1970’s and 1980’s, we are now faced with a threat that is global in extent and predicted to be long-lasting1. The culprit is humanity’s use of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned. Since carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’, it affects the radiative energy budget of the Earth. While carbon dioxide is a relatively minor atmospheric constituent, with a concentration now approaching 400 parts per million (pre-industrial levels were about …