Climate change – separating the facts from the fake news
Fake news was a defining term in both 2016 and 2017, championed by top politicians worldwide. The topic of climate change has featured heavily with claims and counter claims over the validity of the topic and the dominating focus on whether human activity is wholly or in part responsible.
First of all what is climate change? This is not an easy definition, the MET office describe climate change as, ‘a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet's weather patterns or average temperatures’. This would encompass changes in temperature, rainfall, ecology the retreat of glaciers and reductions in the surface area of sea ice and ice shelves. Our planets climate has no fixed points and has developed over thousands of millions of years, most notably with the development of plant life which changed the composition of the planets atmosphere to what we see today and movement of land masses from the shifting of plate tectonics. Those who previously denied climate change, now say they accept climate change but that human is not behind the current changes. The further argument is that scientist also cannot agree on what is behind the current changes in our planets climate.
There is some truth in this but the weight of the number behind each position is quite compelling. It is estimate around 97% of scientist agree that Human activity is main driving force behind our changing climate. Studies and surveys carried out since 2004 have the figure between 91% and 100%, and also show that greater the expertise in climatic science the more convinced the scientist is that human activity is driving current climate change.
The facts are since the mid 1800s there has been an exponential increase in the emissions of Carbon Dioxide and Methane, two of the main contributors to global warming. This mirrors both an increase in human population and the increase in the mean global temperature.
Out of the top 10 warmest years on record (records since 1880), 7 of these have occurred in the last 10 years, the top 3 is made up of 2017,2015 and 2016 respectively. In 2016 the planet was 2.1 ⁰C warmer than the global mean temperature. To put this in perspective, global temperatures only need to fall 4 ⁰C below the mean temperature for the planet to enter into an ice age.
Even if the elevated carbon dioxide levels are not driving climate change, the increase composition of carbon dioxide is having an impact. Elevated levels of carbon dioxide are leading to oceans becoming more acidic, having a detrimental effects on corals and in turn many species of fish.
The Paris agreement was signed in an attempt to reduce the warming impact of human activity to 2C. This has already been breached in 2016. This is why it is import to separate the fact on climate change from the fake news. The UK has experienced one of the coldest winters on record and this unfortunately will lead to fewer people believing the planet is warming. This is where the importance of seeing the bigger picture, collating the facts and drawing conclusions is vital. It is vital for consensus, once we have consensus these problems can be tackled rather than debating whether it is happening.