In a social gathering, that I’ve attended the past week, while I was working the room, glass of wine at hand, I was drawn into one of the conversation hubs by the statement “I had enough with the climate change cult”. I asked the person to elaborate. And that he did. I left the event, with the clarity in my mind that there isn’t such a term as common sense. Or more accurately my common sense is different than that of other people. I arrived home perplexed about my sense of reality. I decided to resort to the only practice that I believe can yield logic explanations. Research.
It is not my objective to bore anyone with scientific terms and too much useless information. I will try to sum up my research to a few facts. And I hope you will be encouraged to look them up and verify the truth for yourselves. The information and the data is available for everyone.
Fact No.1: The planet is overheating
The average temperature of the planet has changed over the centuries. Scientists have been able to reconstruct past temperatures through various methods, such as analyzing ice cores, tree rings, and sediment layers. These records show that the Earth has gone through natural climate variations over thousands of years. However, in recent decades, there has been a significant increase in global temperatures due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports that the average global surface temperature has increased by about 1.1 Celsius (2 Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century. The rate of temperature increase is much faster than any natural climate change observed in the past.
Fact No.2: Climate change is old news
The developed world and its billion dollar corporations they know and study- and sometimes predict phenomena- for decades already.
In 1992 the United Nations held a convention. The UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Its objective was to prevent dangerous man-made interference with the global climate change. That led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. That covered only 12% of the global emissions.
In 2000 the SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) was published. It refers to a set of scenarios -about 40- developed by IPCC to explore different possible future pathways of greenhouse gas emissions and their potential impacts on climate change. The scenarios were created to help researchers and policymakers understand the potential consequences of different socioeconomic and technological choices. For example how a more integrated or divided world can affect the rise of the temperature.
In 2015 we have the Paris Agreement, the first ever universal legally binding global climate agreement. In a few words, it is agreed to limit the global warming at 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit ), by the end of this century. The members of the agreement are liable to submit their NDC’s (National Determined Contribution). The more developed countries have to support financially and technologically the rest of the world, in order for the goal to be fulfilled. The next COP (Conference of the Parties) will take place in Dubai at the end of this year.
The Reality (as I perceive it sprinkled with a bit of my common sense)
Over the past few years I’ve noticed that severe weather related phenomena are happening in more frequency. Heatwaves, wild fires, droughts and rainfalls, not to mention tsunamis and earthquakes. I understand that these severe climate change impacts were always happening and with the access we have on global news, nowadays we are more informed versus in the past where we might be oblivious by a natural disaster that happened in another part of the world. But the key word here is frequency. As we crossing the threshold we are experiencing heatwaves that last longer. Droughts that are more severe.Wild fires burning for weeks. And not unlike in the movie “Don’t Look Up”, as long as our everyday lives aren’t seriously disrupted and our vacation plans are still in order we will keep on going. Until we won’t.
