Much of the news related to climate change in late 2009 and the first half of 2010 was particularly negative for those that believe that substantial action should be taken. The relative failure of the Copenhagen climate change talks was followed by the controversy of ‘Climategate’. Furthermore, in the USA the Obama administration decided to prioritise health care reform over significant climate action.
Whilst the climate news since the summer has not received the sort of headlines it did in the preceding six months, the good news is that once the politicians re-focus on global warming, they will find the science has gone from very firm to exceptionally firm!
Sceptic to believer
The first example of this evidence is that one of the world’s most high profile climate change sceptics, Danish professor Bjorn Lomborg, has declared that global warming is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and “a challenge humanity must confront”. In fact, Lomborg is reported in the Guardian newspaper calling for a $100 billion global annual investment fund, which he believes will resolve the climate problem by the end of this century.
Another example is that both of the institutions involved in the ‘Climategate’ scandal, the IPCC and the University of East Anglia have effectively been cleared of any major wrong doing. Both organisations were admonished by independent inquiries for their lack of transparency and relying on some questionable data. Overall though their scientific findings were found to be sound.
Proven Fact
A final example of the evidence behind climate change is that the American ‘National Academy of Sciences‘ (NAS) has pronounced that human induced climate change is now effectively a proven fact. This sort of statement is not something an institution with the history and credibility of the NAS would take lightly at all. It is therefore somewhat ironic that in the US virtually all of the Republican candidates in the recent mid-term elections were climate ‘atheists’ at best, if not hardline sceptics.
As the media tends to ignore good news stories in favour of controversy, that means the general public only get to hear about events such as Climategate, but not about the evidence we have discussed in this article.
Appreciative
An interesting anecdotal finding that we have found at PeopleProfitPlanet is that when the participants of our workshops are given the facts about climate change (i.e. that it is happening, is caused by man and is worse than they think), they are both surprised and are very appreciative. This information motives them to both take further action themselves and communicate with their colleagues, friends and family about the need for positive change.
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1 Comment for this entry
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Thank you for this. Some interesting snipits, particularly about Lomborg changing his spots (but has he really?). What’s your analysis of Cancun?
Dr Nick Murry
December 20th, 2010 on 11:38 am