Making Sense of Our Changing Climate: 1. Introduction

Index of Blogs and Courses

Much has been written about Climate Change (CC).  I have been involved in creating public understanding of this important subject for the past 15 years.  My general impression is that while there is more awareness of the term CC, there is not a great deal of enthusiasm/understanding among the general population about what may be done to alleviate the effects of CC.  I shall publish a series of blogs to explain the science of CC in a way that a layperson without a science background can appreciate the situation.  

I start by introducing the subject in a very general way:

During a cold spell, one hears comments like - 
'So, where is Global Warming now?', 
'Climate Change is not really happening', 
'OK, Earth might have warmed a little, but it is getting colder again' etc.

Most of the time, these are genuinely felt comments from people not directly involved in meteorological investigations, and represent normal (defensive) reaction to the much talked about dire/threatening consequences of climate change.  Climate Change (CC) is variously described to bring misery to the lives of billions of people - by causing extreme weather events, sea level rise, forced migration, droughts, famines and much else.  Some people even call CC as an existential threat to the human race.  But, this is all going to happen by the end of this century - most bad thing will properly be felt in 50 or 100 years time when a good fraction of people alive today will no longer be around.   

That is the difficulty; CC is a problem of the distant future - we are okay today. It is easy to think that CC is not something that we need to pay too much attention just now - it is a few scientists who are making predictions on impending doom that may or may not happen but we are being asked to make some serious sacrifices in terms of changing the way we live, to give up our extravagant lifestyles - not eat meat products, reduce road and air travel and much more - in fact abstain from almost everything we enjoy.  We are even asked to buy used clothes to save the planet.  

It is not surprising that politicians and authorities in power do not take CC seriously - they have to win elections, safeguard their power base - one can't do that by asking voters to make serious sacrifices for something that is in the future and might not even happen. They pay lip service to mitigating, even reversing, CC but do little in practical terms.  

Against such prevailing background of climate change scepticism, one has to work much harder to convey the scientific case for climate change to the general public.  Scientists are particularly poor in their communication with communities and lay people whose lives will be impacted so severely by CC and who can put real pressure on politicians and authorities to take action.
Also, CC is a global phenomenon and must be addressed by all nations of the world in an effective way. So far, consensus on a global level has been specially difficult to achieve because vested interests - mostly the fossil fuel industry - have sabotaged/confused the science and it is not possible to agree on some fundamental causes of CC. Committing huge sums of money is not easy when the target has been made so fuzzy.

I list some obvious question with short answers:  

• Who is responsible for CC? -  Mostly developed nations in OECD so far, but recently China too.
• What has caused CC? -  Population increase and unbridled, wasteful consumption habits are the primary reasons.
• What should be done to stop further damage by CC? -  Control population and reduce consumption
• How does one achieve this? - Developed countries point finger at developing countries for recent increase in emissions of green house gases (GHG) leading to CC.  Developing countries blame the rich countries to have caused the problem over the past 200 years.  It does seem unreasonable for rich countries to ask others to stay poor while not wanting to sacrifice their high consumption lifestyles.
• Will renewable energy (RE) solve CC? - Hardly. The main problem is that too many people are consuming and wasting too many resources. RE is a mere diversion - it is too little and too late.
• Who will pay for CC mitigation/reversal? - Difficult question to answer. Nations have been making commitments since 1997 Kyoto protocol but have rarely implemented these.  
• Is it too late to solve the CC conundrum?  -  Probably. Most scientific opinion is beginning to converge on a mean global temperature rise of about 3 degree centigrade (C) provided nations start to take some serious action.  On the current trajectory, a rise of 4C or even greater is likely.  
• Should one just give up and hope for the best?  - Not advisable.  To continue as now (business as usual) will create many bad situations that will be irreversible - some of them will cause runaway uncontrolled changes whose consequences cannot be predicted at present.  In this scenario, CC might indeed become an existential threat for the human race.
• Who will be affected most by CC? - Majority of people in the developing countries and the poor in rich countries.   

I have indicated here that overpopulation and overconsumption are the driving forces of CC.  Until about 1990, OECD countries overconsumed resources and set CC in motion.  With the emergence of China and to some extent India, a much larger population has joined the binge - resulting CC trajectory is looking much worse.  Ironically, developed countries continue to consume several times greater resources per capita than people in developing countries do. The trajectory of resource consumption and hence global warming is very worrying.

Superficially, it appears that the developed countries in Europe and USA have controlled their emissions - but this is misleading.  Developed countries have moved on from manufacturing to service industry and buy thier manufactured goods in great quantities from Asia - mainly China.  While the emissions from China appear to be rising, a lot of these products are consumed in Europe and America.  

Please click on the link below to understand the pressures that humans have put the Earth under, and how it is damaging our planet and destroying the welfare of future generations.

Over-population is 'Elephant in the Room'; Why Do We Not Address the Real Problem?  

In the next blog, I shall explain the difference between weather and climate.