How fast is climate change happening?
The pace of the earth’s warming is accelerating. The twentieth century was the warmest century of the last millennium. The 1990s were the warmest decade of the last century. And, 2003 was the third warmest year on record just behind 2002, the second warmest year on record. The hottest year on record is still 1998. In this century, scientists expect a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. They estimate that this could result in a global increase of temperatures between 1 and 6 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. For updated information on changes in the world’s temperature, see the press releases, particularly the year-end releases, of the World Meteorological Organization at: www.wmo.ch/web/Press/Press.
• if climate change is happening, happening fast and attributable to human activity, what can humans do to counter it? Up until the first three reports of the IPCC significant controversy took place around the first two topics. A significant number of people had reasonable cause to doubt that temperature and carbon measures of a maximum of 150 years were sufficient to establish that climate change was indeed happening, and that the link between a potential change in climate and human activity was not altogether clear. At the beginning of 2008, and after the publication of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in November 2007, these two topics have not been resolved per se (there will never be scientific certainty), but have garnered a general agreement that: • It is almost certain that climate change is happening • It is very highly likely that this climate change is attributable to human activity. At the very least this allows humans and their policy makers to take the view that, thing
26 Chapter 2 action Flood Watch 17 The Scoop on Soil 18 Storm Chart 19 Dino Time/Human Time 21 Avoiding the Fate of the Dinosaurs 23 Learn How to Help Endangered Species 23 Signs of Spring 26 The Causes of Climate Change: Our World out of Balance 27 Too Much Greenhouse Gas in Our Atmosphere 27 Too MuchFossil Fuel 30 Too Many People 31 Too Much Electricity Use 32 Too Much Stuff 33 Too Much Driving 34 Industrial Farms 35 Too Much Meat 35 Rainforest Deforestation 36 Laws That Don’t Protect the Environment 38 Climate Change Isn’t the Only Problem 39 Chapter 3 action Greenhouse Effect 28 Carbon Monoxide Versus Dioxide 29 Analyze This Quote 31 Tune in and Turn off 33 Animal Simplicity 33 Park It 34 Locating the World’s Tropical Rainforests 36 Learn How to Help Preserve Tropical Rainforests 37 U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement 38 Lose the Plastic! 41 How People Can Stop Climate Change 43 Use Renewable Energy 43 Change the Way We Live 46 Chapter 4 action Sign Up for Green Energy 45 Ana
Who needs to do what about it? The latest IPCC report points to the fact that climate change seems to be happening faster than expected, whereas the latest Bali discussions show the tensions between the developed world, which is responsible for the vast majority of the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – and the developing world – which is responsible for the bulk of the growth in new greenhouse gases. Beyond the confusion of terms, causes and responsibilities lies a combination of other phenomena, namely resource wars over energy supplies and cycles of deforestation, massive changes in land use and other abuses of the Earth’s natural resources which exacerbate natural disasters. These phenomena are either connected to or are concomitant to the issue of climate change. This purpose of this subsite is to provide a general roadmap and clear definitions and terms to address the question “What is Climate Change?
