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Climate change is an issue we need to address

Is climate science a bunch of nonsense, as some would contend, or is the changing climate a real issue that we need to address? If I am going to pick a controversial topic for a column this would be right on top of the list.

Is climate science a bunch of nonsense, as some would contend, or is the changing climate a real issue that we need to address?

If I am going to pick a controversial topic for a column this would be right on top of the list.

Despite years of data and a massive amount of research, there are still many people that believe that the climate is not changing at all. To these individuals, I would suggest that a quick examination of the average annual surface temperature for the past 130 years would seem to counter this notion.

The temperature readings indicate - unequivocally - that the world is getting hotter. Not a lot, maybe, but hotter nonetheless. And in a system as large as the atmosphere, even a change of 0.8 C is a substantial change.

This is because of the mass of the atmosphere.

Weighing in at something like five-by-10 to the 18th power kilograms(5,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg), the atmosphere has a lot of thermal inertia.

Shifting the mean surface temperature involves heating both a lot of air and altering, to some extent, the vertical temperature gradient.

The amount of energy involved is tremendous.

It's a bit like giving a push start to a heavily armored tank - it can be done, but it is not easy to do.

Or maybe the way to think of it is like the difference between warming a thimble of water and an Olympic sized swimming pool using an ordinary stove burner. The thimble will reach boiling in a matter of moments whereas the pool will take a very long time to show any sort of shift in temperature.

And because of its volume, surface area and internal currents, it will not heat up very evenly. This is why the temperature profile for the past 130 years is so erratic with bumps and jogs from year to year. Solar incidence has not been constant and there are other factors that come into play, such as ocean currents and El Nino/La Nina, along with simple variations in the weather.

Still, the trend in the mean surface temperature has seen a steadily warmer Earth over the modern era (the past 130 years) during which we have direct measurements of temperature. Using proxy data - from ice cores, tree rings, pollen counts, vegetation type and coverage, and other information - the record of the surface temperature can be extended much further back and it is consistent with the picture that we have.

The Earth is definitely getting hotter. Indeed, it is at one of the hottest points it has been at for the past 400,000 years.

And as the surface temperature of the Earth is tied to climate, it is absurd to argue that the changes in temperature are not driving changes in the climate.

That doesn't stop some people from trying, but even the most ardent anti-global warmers (AGW) generally concede the point that the mean surface temperature is changing.

The question then shifts to a more sophisticated argument. Yes, the AGW crowd says, the temperature is changing and this is impacting the climate, but can you prove that it is our fault? That is, is it a result of increased carbon dioxide levels or could it be the result of changes in the sun?

If the latter, then we really are in for a rough ride, but it is a fair question.

Ironically, NASA had a satellite system that would have given us a definitive answer if it hadn't been mothballed by former U.S. president George W. Bush. But there are measurements that indicate that while variations in solar radiation are important, they do not produce the temperature changes that we are seeing.

One could also make the argument that it doesn't matter what is driving climate change - the sun or increased carbon dioxide levels - we are still going to have to respond by finding ways of adapting to the changes in our climate.

However, this would entirely sidestep the fundamental issue that over the past 150 years we have been burning ancient carbon at a rate that is quite unsustainable. During that time the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased from 285 parts per million in 1880 to more than 390 parts per million today. The temperature tracks the carbon dioxide levels. This has been the case for as long as we have been able to determine.

We have also seen the world's human population blossom from roughly 1.1 to 7.1 billion people, all of whom require resources.

The combination of carbon consumption through combustion and the increasing world's population mean that we are headed into a future very different from our past. As our climate changes, some species will not be able to adapt and ecosystems will go extinct.

Is climate change a real issue? Yes, and one that we need to address.