There, I said it.  I don’t believe in climate change.  It is not a religion.  People will often talk about it in religious terms (e.g. “preaching to the converted”), but it is not about a leap of faith or opinion as to what is going on.

We can understand the facts and then take a view on what we should do about it.

The facts are very clear that the planet is warming and that the cause of this is man-made.  Many, many studies by different people using different sources and different techniques have proved this.  It is natural that someone not convinced of this would find a way to deny it, at least in their own minds.  That doesn’t make the facts go away.

To pick out two sources of evidence, please take a look at recent work published in the Science journal showing how until the industrial revolution we were heading towards an ice-age, with temperatures slowing dropping for about 9000 years.  Or this video (with references) showing what proportion of the recent warming is man-made, and that it has continued unabated:

I could go on (and on and on), but I won’t.

Instead, what I want to know is what we are letting ourselves in for if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the rate that we have (or more).

That is much trickier because we are talking about predicting the future.  The mainstream scientific reports on the issue (e.g. from the IPCC) give qualitative guides as to the probable effects and how quickly they will come about.  I want to know numbers.  I’m sure you do to.

How many species are at risk? How many people will be displaced or put into water or food distress?  What are the likely economic impacts?

Without some grasps of the numbers, it is difficult to know what courses of action are the most sensible (other than those that are obviously a good idea even in the absence of climate change, such as increasing efficiency to reduce energy costs).

I’ll address this in a future post or posts, after further research.  If you have some information on this, I’d love to hear from you.

Thoughts below as always.

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke