To the climate change deniers

I would class myself as a skeptic, in the sense of scientific skepticism, in in the sense that I will look at the evidence I know of and draw my own conclusions on issues. However, I am not a climate change skeptic in the sense that I deny is happening, neither am some extreme climate change believer who believes the world is about to end. I am concerned enough about climate change to reduce my own energy usage over the last 10-15 years. I have been using 100% renewable electricity for the last 10 years for example. I have become interested in the area, and this has led me currently to be studying part-time for an Earth Sciences degree with the Open University.  Therefore I think I have some understanding of the science, but I am not an expert, and this is nothing to do with how I make my living.

I would describe the current problem we have as follows:

1. In the past, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were much higher than they are today
2. One of the key reasons that the levels reduced was that the remains of plants and animals became buried, rather than breaking down and returning their carbon to the atmosphere as CO2.
3. Some of these remains became oil, coal or gas (hence the term ‘fossil’ fuels)
4. By extracting these fossils and burning them we are returning back to the atmosphere the CO2 that was removed long ago.

CO2 does seem to be rising, here the is classic graph showing this, but why should we care about this? The reason is that CO2 tends to warm the atmosphere through the greenhouse effect, and that historically CO2 and temperature tend to follow each other. Global temperatures do seem to be rising, with the Noughties being the hottest decade in 160 years. I should say that global temperature is the average temperature across the world. The UK has had its coldest winter this year for many years, but if other parts of the world are  hotter at the moment, the global temperature could still be higher now than it was a year ago.

Now you may still be saying, so what, and this is where I think the uncertainty is in terms of what effect this will have. I don’t know whether there is going to be little change in how humans are living or whether vast swathes of the Earth are going to become uninhabitable. The extra CO2 could be all absorbed to maintain things roughly as they are, or there could be some ‘tipping point’ that changes the climate drastically. I don’t think anybody really knows, but that doesn’t change the validity for me of the points above and I still think there is cause for concern. I think we will need to change to a low carbon economy anyway, as there are only so many dead plants that we can burn as oil, though how much oil we have left is another controversy by itself.

Last time I had my hair cut, my hairdresser said he didn’t believe there was any climate change and nothing would convince him there was. I think this is sad, but I would also think it sad if somebody said that they were convinced that climate change was happening, and nothing would convince them otherwise. Science is supposed to be about producing hypotheses and testing them, not looking for data to support a strongly held point of view. The same data could be used to support both sides of the argument, so you can probably find data to support any point of view if you look hard enough.

For a list of 90 arguments against and a scientific response, see here. These people also do a superb iPhone app.