Climate Change Debate – What You Should Know

The climate change debate is really heating up ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December. But it seems that more and more people are taking a sceptical view on climate change.

I think a lot of things are to blame for this. Mostly it’s down to politicians who have been warning us about climate change for years but have in reality done nothing about it. It’s all well and good trying to spread awareness of the threats of climate change that we all face, but everyone is aware of it now. Continuing to spread awareness without actually doing anything about it is just making people fed up and leading to more people choosing to falsely believe that global warming is just a natural cycle or that it has not been impacted by human emissions.

Of course sceptical opinion its being helped by oil companies spreading propaganda and funding fake scientists to dismiss the greenhouse effect, picking small inaccurate truths and manipulating them to use as “evidence global warming is not man made”. Their argument is helped further when governments exaggerate predictions of climate change to make people take it seriously. Both of these schemes are wrong and should be ended now.

So forget what you have been told, here are the facts behind climate change. Read them and make up your own mind.

• The world is warming. Average global temperatures have increased by 0.74C over the past 100 years and by 0.6C in the 100 years before that.
• There is a parallel trend of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere with rising temperatures. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) in pre industrial times to 387ppm today. Methane levels have also risen from 700 parts per billion to 1,745 parts per billion. Today’s levels of these greenhouse gases are the highest for at least 650,000 years.
• The worlds climate can vary naturally. The Earth’s orbit, changes in the intensity of the Sun, volcanic eruptions, atmospheric pollution and natural variations such as El Nino can all impact atmospheric temperatures.
• Evidence of the past climate shows that rising greenhouse gas levels have been followed by warming. In the past decade, scientists have also established that it is impossible to account for recent observed changes in global temperatures unless human activities have had an impact. Computer models of the Earth’s climate agree that natural variation can explain only a part of recent warming. Only if man made greenhouse gases are included do the models replicate what has actually happened.
• The warmest year on record was 1998. This was in part due to a strong El Nino which has a heating effect. Since then temperatures have stabilised but at a very high level. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred after 1997.
• Natural climate variations mean that there will be periods of temperature stability even when the overall temperature trend rises. The the stabilising temperatures of the last decade are not a sign that global warming has stopped.A study led by Jeff Knight and Peter Stott, of the Met Office, found that such hiatuses occur relatively often during periods of warming, and aren’t inconsistent with the upward trend.
• Arctic sea ice is in long term decline.  In 2007 a record low of 39.2% less ice than the 1979-2001 average was recorded.There is considerable natural variation in ice extent from year to year, but the overall trend is towards shrinkage. Models generally predict that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer by 2060 to 2080, though some recent estimates have suggested this could happen more quickly.

When discussing climate change please remember that the discussion on whether man made global warming is happening or not has ended. It’s not for us the public to decide whether we believe scientific proof or not, unfortunately our opinion has no impact on the truth. What we can impact is what we do to prevent it. Now we must focus our efforts on working together to prevent dangerous warming of or climate and secure a safe sustainable future.