Last week I wrote about the signs of early spring and put a few jabs at climate change deniers.
This column did exactly what I had hoped. It sparked conversation on the topic.
Those who commented on the article were in fact climate change deniers, stating random outliers of data in the overall trend, which is akin to the Republican senator of Oklahoma who brought a snowball to the senate floor as evidence that global warming was a hoax. I am so glad this type of outlandish behavior has not manifested itself in Canadian politics as of yet.
Weather is what you get and climate is what you expect.
This week I hope to explain climate change to those who don't fully understand the science behind it.
I write this column with a mere bachelor of science and only a handful of classes in a human and environmental interaction masters program before I left school to tackle other adventures that I felt academia would only prevent me from doing all the while furthering my student debt. So while I am not an expert on this topic I do however have an understanding of the scientific process and natural processes that allow us to understand climate change. Glancing into my personal library one could reasonably make the statement that I may have a better understanding than your average Joe.
It's true the climate has always been changing. While observed records of our climate indeed are not extreme in age, pollen in lake sediment, trapped air bubbles and neutrons in glaciers can give us a reasonable degree of accuracy (of the past 800,00 years according to NASA) when looking to the past climate fluctuations. In our last century of climatic observations we have observed an overall increase of approximately .74 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures according to NASA and the IPCC. While this number does not seem significant, it is when you live in an extreme environment such as the arctic. Think back to your history book's description of the Franklin expedition, now remember last week's stories from CBC on the cruise ships traveling the Northwest Passage with thousands of people aboard the ships.
97 percent of climate scientist agree that this warming (which is happening) is not caused by orbital variation nor sun spots or solar flares. These experts agree this climate change is anthropogenic.
While I believe Prince George has no doubt its share of scientific geniuses, I don't believe that there is a scientific genius in P.G. that is more informed on climate change than the leading 97 percent of top climate scientists.
It is true that the climate has been warm before and this is not the problem. The problem is the rate at which the change is occurring. According to NASA, "As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of four to seven degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming."
We are now in the sixth great extinction on Earth. In fact geologists are now calling our current Epoch the Anthropocene as our industrial existence has now left its mark geologically on Earth forever.
In 1750, there was 250 PPM of carbon dioxide (the most important greenhouse gas) in our atmosphere now there is 400 PPM.
If you were to drive a car somehow up through our atmosphere for 100 kilometres you would then be in outer space. This is how small our atmosphere is. It is ludicrous to think that all of our industrial emissions have not been able to change the composition of our thin veil of an atmosphere
It saddens me that some still deny these dire facts because we have work to do and no time to waste. There is no one to blame but ourselves.
To those who think this is a nefarious plot against the common man from the government and scientists, I think you must first assume our government is intelligent enough to push such a plot as this onto the public and ask yourself, why would they do such a thing, what would be the benefit, and also, "Have I been spending too much time on YouTube watching conspiracy theories?"
P.s. The Earth is not flat.
