Every action we take to reduce greenhouse gases, no matter where it occurs, will make a difference.
Consider these facts and decide yourself.
The first decade of this century has been, by far, the warmest decade on the instrumental record. Despite 1998 being the warmest individual year – the last ten years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature.
Over the last 100 years the Earth has warmed by about 0.75°C and the speed it is warming at is getting faster. Spring in Europe arrives about ten days earlier than it did in the 1970s. In 160 years of records, the ten hottest years have been in the last 13 years.
Arctic sea ice is melting; the September summer minimum extent has shrunk by about 10% every ten years since the late 70s. The smallest amounts of Arctic summer ice on record were in the last three years: 2007-2009. In a few decades, large parts of the Arctic Ocean are expected to have no late summer sea-ice at all.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have gone up 38%, to 387ppm, since pre-industrial times. Rising levels of greenhouse gases are directly linked to human activity like burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. There is a clear link between more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global warming.
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that human induced climate change poses a huge threat to the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not run by any government – ‘intergovernmental’ means it answers to all 192 governments signed up to it. Its reports are written by independent scientists. It is one of the most rigorous scientific bodies that exists. It brings together many thousands of scientists from countries all over the world to put together the best assessments of climate science available.
The scientific consensus says we need to stop the world getting more than 2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. After that itpoint, in many regions it will become harder to produce food and competition for water, and rises in sea level and loss of species will get much worse. We’ve got the technologies we need for a low-carbon world – we just need to go for it now. It’ll cost much less to go low carbon than it will to let climate change happen.
Global sea levels have already risen by about 17 cmcentimetres since 1900, thanks to melting ice and warming oceans. This is already threatening low-lying countries, such as islands and Bangladesh. Millions more people are expected to be flooded every year by 2080. The global sea level could rise by up to 59cm this century. In Europe alone this could affect over 20 million people. And it looks like the sea is rising more quickly now than in the 20th century.
Scientists are clear that there is strong evidence that changes in solar radiation could not have caused the rapid warming we have seen over the past 50 years. Since the industrial revolution, additional greenhouse gases have had about ten times the effect on the climate as changes in the sun’s output.
Even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, we are already locked into a global temperature rise of at least 1.4°C (since 1750) because of the delayed impact between emissions and temperature change. It is already happening, and we need to act now to stop it getting much worse.
If this is not enough evidence, then what is?
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