Common Sense Science of Climate Change: A simple introduction to some major issues

By Robert Burns

Are you overwhelmed by the conflicting information and passionate debates surrounding climate change? Does the urgency in climate discourse leave you feeling anxious and concerned? Do you wish you had a clearer understanding of the science that underpins this global issue?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then this book is your essential guide.

This isn’t a manifesto pushing a political agenda. Instead, it aims to arm you with straightforward scientific insights to clarify the complexities of climate change. This knowledge will empower you to form educated opinions, devoid of emotional bias or unsupported belief.

Inside, you’ll unravel a wealth of information, including:

The critical role of the Greenhouse Effect in sustaining life on Earth
The criteria that make a gas a ‘greenhouse gas’
The contributing factors to sea level fluctuations
Innovative ways to reduce methane emissions from livestock
The limitations of climate models in providing precise forecasts, and why they can only offer estimates
The meaning and implications of ‘net zero,’ along with promising advancements in electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and nuclear energy that could help us achieve this goal
A balanced roadmap for the future, integrating cutting-edge technology and renewable resources to secure economic prosperity without sacrificing our planet
Equip yourself with the knowledge you need to navigate the intricate world of climate change, and be part of informed discussions and decisions that shape our planet’s future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035866557

Robert Burns

Robert Burns has been involved in the areas of self improvement and assisting people in becoming who they were meant to be from birth. He knows that stories play a significant role in our life's choices and future accomplishments. This short story has a wealth of information concerning friendship so I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Book preview

About the Author

Robert Burns, now retired, spent 40 years teaching and researching in universities around the world. From training students to be geography teachers in University Departments of Education, and ‘A’ level examiner in physical geography, he later used his deep interest in the psychological aspects of student learning and motivation to study and qualify as a psychologist. In retirement, the climate ‘wars’ redirected his interest back to Earth sciences. Burns is an experienced author with over 20 texts published by major publishing houses including Longmans, Sage, Allen and Unwin, Kluwer, and Addison-Wesley.

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Robert Burns 2024

The right of Robert Burns to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Synopsis

Chapter 1 Background to climate change issues arguing for balanced approach and policies that recognise (a) fossil fuel warming, (b) Earth–Sun orbital effects and (c) the need to maintain required energy supplies with a mix of existing and technologically innovative sources.

In Chapter 2, science is explained as a methodology that constantly explores and advances knowledge to produce reliable and valid findings and is never settled. The methodology is constrained by design control to produce valid and reliable evidence.

Chapter 3 provides examples of failed prognostications and fake news based on belief and dogma rather than science, which leads to panic and social unrest among those strongly influenced by often eminent persons.

Chapter 4 explores non-human sources of climate change due to Earth’s orbital relationships with the Sun involving long term changes in obliquity, eccentricity and precession which provide a basis for slow long-term change such as repeated glacial cycles.

Chapter 5 explains development and functions of clouds, using basic physics in both warming and cooling the Earth and the role of cosmic dust fired at Earth from space that provides much of the cloud condensation nuclei around which rain droplets form.

Chapter 6 explains the functions of global weather systems (Monsoons, El Nino, La Nina and the Indian Ocean Dipole) and which are shown to be largely independent of current climate change.

Chapters 7 and 8 focus on a simple chemistry/physics explanation of the Greenhouse Effect and why it is important to both maintaining life on Earth and amplifying current warming. Explanation of why some gases are and other gases are not greenhouse gases is offered. A range of policies and methods of reducing greenhouse gas levels are discussed.

Chapter 9 explores problems with the measurement of a global temperature and some dubious manipulations of some temperature data.

Chapter 10 is a critical exposé of a piece of badly designed research study which, despite serious criticisms by other researchers, was initially used by the IPCC as the basis of its climate warming narrative stoking global alarm.

Chapters 11 and 12 considers climate change in polar regions focussing on ice melt and effects on animals that live there, and also on ocean carbon sinks, ocean biota and relative sea level changes some of which is due to coasts and islands sinking and land rising after the weight of ice sheets disappeared.

Chapter 13 discusses how clean and green are renewables when total lifespan from manufacture to disposal are considered.

Chapter 14 attempts a simple non-mathematical explanation of modelling and how it operates in climate change research.

Chapter 15 discusses misuses of the term ‘unprecedented’ when reporting a current weather event and the need to check against historical records.

Chapter 16 and 17 considers the interlocking politics, problems and results of Glasgow COP26 and in conclusion offers rational technological developments and policies to net zero in 2050.

Chapter 1

Introduction

It’s raining cats and dogs—is this climate change?

This book is an attempt to present a balanced perspective on one of the hottest polarising issues of today, that of climate change. The issue has evoked an irreconcilable clash, dominated by ideology and extremism between two groups, with the disagreement never so much about truth as about dogma.

One group, the climate activists, loudly and passionately argue for the total abolition of fossil fuels within the immediate future, with thunderous Thunberg vitriolically damning the role of fossil fuel the main purveyor of greenhouse gasses, the cause of current climate warming and future Armageddon, and aggressively demanding a tunnel vision replacement by renewables, focussed essentially solar and wind power.

At the other end of the spectrum are the deniers, an almost anonymous mob rejecting totally the role of greenhouse gas emissions for the current warming who emphasise the role of natural periodic cycles of alternate heating and cooling in climate change They also warn of serious damage from climate activism to national economies and prosperity as insufficient energy from renewables dampens down industrial production and quality of living.

The differences in ideology between the two poles are obviously so mutually exclusive that there is a wide chasm in thinking, leaving no common ground for sensible and rational policy debate. Claim and counter-claim, stunts and theatrics confuse most people whose scientific literacy is not of a standard able to understand the issues. This is not a criticism as the knowledge content of climate change ranges through most letters of the alphabet from Astronomy to Zoology. The general public just don’t aspire to an unmissable global cremation nor do they want to live in a broken economy with its inevitable social chaos. Given that scientific consensus does support the fact that warming, mainly man-made (anthropogenic), is occurring, logic suggests that a sensible middle ground needs to be found that can provide, at an understandable level, that will satisfy and provide hope and resilience to most people, rational conversation and policies which are (i) feasible and effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 while (ii) maintaining and even boosting energy production from a basket of sources based on current and evolving scientific knowledge and innovation.

This book is an attempt to provide some balance invoking the positives of (a) using simple science to demonstrate the real situation and (b) consequent adaptive policies at a level most people can understand. This offers a sensible middle ground approach to tackling climate change by focussing on science to tease out some of the issues and embracing new technology and processes to facilitate the diminution of greenhouse warming while ensuring reliable and sufficient energy production.

At the outset, let me admit, I am a climate change supporter and accept that the climate currently is in a warming phase.

With an MA in Earth Sciences (studying Physical Geography, Geology, Climatology, Meteorology and Soil Science),

I am comfortable with the facts that climate changes, involving natural repeated sequences of hot, warm and cold periods, even glacial ones, have occurred for billions of years, well before humans were on the earth.

I also endorse the facts that the Earth has warmed up recently at an accelerated rate and continues to do so, the amplification being due to global average concentrations of all the major long-lived greenhouse gases continuing to increase and rise into the atmosphere with carbon dioxide equivalent of all gases currently reaching over 500 parts per million (ppm) and globally averaged air temperature rising to nearly 1.5°C since accurate records began in the mid-nineteenth century.

The evidence for fluctuations of climate over geological time is overwhelming, including fossil records, rock types, geomorphological land and coast shaping, tree rings, soil and ice core samples, indexing considerable periodic variations in climate over millions of years which taken all together demonstrate a consistency of evidence supporting a variety of climate changes over a geological time scale, e.g.,

three hundred million years ago, northern Europe was a desert and coal began to form in Antarctica;

a hundred and fifty million years ago the middle parts of both Australia and N. America were shallow and lake swamps where dinosaur bones have been preserved in the sediment;

ninety million years ago alligators enjoyed the humid swamps of the Arctic, and

about 6 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea dried up.

In the Quaternary glaciation period, which began several million years ago, cold glacial periods took place every 41,000 years. However, huge glacial sheets have appeared less frequently over the last 800,000 years and now appear in a 100,000-year cycle. In the 100,000-year cycle, ice sheets start to grow for roughly 85–90,000 years and then take another 10–12,000 years to rapidly collapse in warmer periods before the process slowly starts to repeat itself. The most recent cycles of glacial and warm periods have occurred from around 2.5 million years ago to around the commencement in around 11,000 BC of the current warm period, when the glaciers last started to retreat, with none of these changes due to human interference. We are still in that periodic interglacial warm period and in a thousand years, our future generations may start to shiver, witnessing the slow onset of another glacial episode!

Getting more up to date, over the last two thousand years a mixture of historical records such as Roman military reports, personal letters and diaries, monastic and farm estate records, export trade manifests etc. reveal a recent sequence of blips in the current warm interglacial across the UK and Western Europe of:

a warm period during the Roman domination (500 BC–500 AD), with for example, the flourishing of vineyards in Britain:

a bitterly cold wet period in the Dark Ages (500 AD–950 AD), with famine, crop failure, plague and other diseases rampant as recorded in monastic and estate farm records:

a Medieval warm period widely known as the Warm Optimum (950 AD–1450 AD) with temperatures as high or even higher than they are now (that is why the term ‘optimum’ is used). Now covered largely by ice, this warmth resulted in Greenland being invaded by Vikings whose settlements were sustained by livestock and cereal crops, and the N. Hemisphere flourished with exploration and trade routes, art, music and literature. This was followed by:

the Little Ice Age around 1450 AD–1890 AD when letters, diaries, illustrations and book writers such as Dickens and the Bronte’s described vividly bitterly cold winters, stagecoaches combatting deep snow, skating on frozen lakes and rivers, making it possible, for example, to walk across the Thames on thick ice.

The waning of this cold period led us into the start of another warming period that we are now experiencing as global temperatures rise once again (but not sufficiently warm to return the south of Greenland to green again or large numbers of vineyards across the UK yet!). The issue with this warming is that it is quicker than what might be expected from the natural periodic cycle, which then articulates the argument of fossil fuel emissions amplifying the sequence.

The year dates above mark approximate periods only and reflect when very gradual change started and ended. In other words, the sequence reflects a natural slow oscillation between warming and cooling within the current over-riding interglacial period, with each cycle lasting over many centuries. These cycles appear paced by periodic variations in Sun–Earth tilt, orbital relationships and cosmic impacts i.e., natural rather than human induced change, often termed orbital forcing. More will be explained on how these extra-terrestrial non-human variations affect the changes in the heat distribution regimes on Earth in Chapters 4 and 5.

Unfortunately, the academic school subjects providing basic understanding of the processes of weather and climate, essentially physics and chemistry, are not only infrequently chosen by many high school students who regard them as difficult, but are also impacted by the shortage of teachers qualified to impart these science subjects in a knowledgeable and thorough way. Both these issues lead to a combination of misunderstandings, lack of basic valid knowledge and an easy acceptance of doomsday climate warming scenarios propagated among the general public by climate activists and mass media. The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (2018) showed Australian students, for example, three years lower in performance than the top countries in science and maths and demonstrating a continual decline over 12 years (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1 Declining standards in science and maths performance scores among Australian secondary students.

Adapted from

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_AUS.pdf.

Simply endorsing climate activism’s human (anthropogenic) causes behind climate warming without balancing other potential sources in the argument and abatement practicalities just makes life so much easier for mass media commentators and academics seeking publicity, advancement and funding. The global warming issue has actually been with us for decades. I remember it being raised when studying for my Earth Sciences degree in the early 60s. Australian newspapers also bear witness to early worries. As early as 1933, the Townsville Daily Bulletin headlined that ‘Carbon Dioxide could change the World’; in 1947 the Courier Mail Brisbane 06/06/47 warned ‘the whole earth seems to be warming up’. Cairns Post 10/06/50 warned ‘The earth is getting warmer, the weathermen now agree. If the world’s temperature keeps rising at its present, or a faster rate, many things will happen, mostly bad’. Early and recent history placed religion and communism respectively as the main authoritarian threats to freedom. The current replacement is Environmentalism. The rule seems to be ‘Go with the Flow’, accept group think and don’t offend anyone.

Climate science has really been turned into a catastrophic headline for fear sells mass media. Social and news media have little interest in facts that might make the disaster narrative less compelling. ‘Unprecedented’ is the usual descriptor of major weather events, whether warranted or not. Other common weapons of climate alarmists appear to be barbed epithets aimed at their ‘enemies’ such as heads in the sand, deniers, flat earthers, anti-science and even worse. But given time and more valid knowledge about the background to climate change of which climate warming is only one side of a duopoly, plus middle of the road national policies that seek to mitigate carbon emissions at the same time bringing into play a range of other energy options, with rich entrepreneurs and big business replacing extreme activism, as they initiate and develop technological advancements, the extremists activists will have had the ball taken away from them and should fade away as did the 70s proponents of a new ice age (!), and those who predicted the end of oil by 1979, and the computer disaster predictors of the Y2K Millennium bug.

The politics has remained virtually the same with governments unwilling to take any serious action that would negatively affect economic interests (and their electoral chances). But strip away all the politics, and the science tells a different story: although some of the warming is part of an interglacial effect, reducing carbon emissions now, in a rational, sensible and middle way, neither alarmist nor denialist, will buy more time to get down to net zero and start the journey to some cooling, but inaction now dramatically cuts the time we have to act.

The question usually asked in the climate change context is "Do you believe in climate warming? Whereas this text is based on the question Do you understand climate change?" The first question is similar to being questioned about your religious belief—a sort of one-sided coin where you virtue signal to avoid giving offence.

The second question focussed on understanding rather than belief, and implies the application of knowledge and debate about both warming and cooling—a two-sided coin, weighing up the pros and cons of research findings and what the realistic responses should be to a complex issue which is still subject to continuing research.

This second question also boils down to three issues and not whether climate change actually occurs, for most people accept that it does.

Firstly, to what extent are current climate changes human induced rather than natural periodic variation; what is the relative impact of each?

Secondly, how far is current change greater, similar to or lesser than changes in the past; and

Thirdly understanding how this change is being presented to the public, which adds philosophical, political, social and economic nuances to the arguments and policy responses.

These three questions are inextricably linked for change can be interpreted in two opposing ways. Many perceive current change in the context of climate as cyclic i.e., going round and round, alternately cooling and then warming ad infinitum; others perceive it as linear in that the direction of warming change will continue in the same way maybe to extinction if we do not intervene. Acceptance of one side or the other both involve political answers focussing on economic and social issues, involving questions of how do we want to live and work in the future.

This short book has been written to provide some insight into what evidence and arguments are relevant and valid, offering a simple balanced understanding of climate warming issues.

on one hand of some important processes involving inter alia the role of the solar system, chemistry and physics principles pertaining to gases, the radiation spectrum, cloud formation, convection and humidity, problems in temperature and sea level measurement, and climate modelling,

and on the other hand what climate warming knowledge and technological innovations might both have to offer now and in the future, all of which massively impact on economic, social and political argument and political decisions.

The explanations and argument in this book are for lay persons who may want to understand a little more about the science and issues raised by social media, politicians and climate activists as other texts on these issues such as those by Plimer (2009; 2017), the bi-annual IPA Climate Change reports (most recent 2020), and documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are substantially written in an academic and reference book style, make heavy reading and require a sound background in a range of sciences. This leaves those in the general public interested in the debate without access to some basic scientific information and argument that would enable them to make a balanced judgement on the many complex issues of climate change leaving them at the mercy of the slogans and hype of media reporting and street protest groups of both activists and deniers.

Confusion in Terminology

Before progressing further, a little sidestep into a potential trap of understanding what several major concepts located within the climate context debate mean otherwise it can lead to confusing and conflicting use of terminology, with consequent invalid information and arguments. We will deal with four of these confusions here.

confusion in the use of the terms climate and weather

confusion between climate warming and climate change

no clear distinction made between carbon and carbon dioxide

what is meant by the concept, net zero emissions—the ultimate aim of most national programmes and international agreements

1. Climate and Weather Confused

The terms weather and climate are not synonymous. The crucial difference between weather and climate is the measure of time and spatial extent.

Weather reflects short-term conditions of the atmosphere like the passage of warm and cold fronts over a small area. These create short-term changes, often daily and even hourly, in temperature, pressure, humidity, cloudiness, wind, precipitation, etc.

Climate is how the atmosphere behaves as the long-term weather pattern, derived from the analysis of observed statistical data of humidity, temperature, sunshine hours, predominant wind direction, etc. for an extended period of time over a large region.

Climates are classified into types of climate covering large regional and even continental areas and named to reflect their general, special and continuing identifying characteristics with considerable spatial and temporal range such as Equatorial, Tropical, Mediterranean, Arid (desert), Polar. While we often are amazed or even disturbed by extreme weather events, these are short term like a violent localised whirlwind or a sudden localised storm cell dumping many mm of rain in a matter of minutes and are not evidence of climate change.

2. Climate Warming and Climate Change

The terms "climate warming" (often now referred to as global warming) and "climate change are sometimes used ambiguously and interchangeably, but warming is only one aspect of climate change. Climate warming means just that and implies an upward trend in the Earth’s rising surface temperature and was first noted by in 1896, by a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, who warned that if we double atmospheric CO2 levels to 560 parts per million (from preindustrial levels of 280), then an increase of several degrees would occur in surface temperature levels. The change to global warming was in 1975 by W. Broecker’s first use of the term in an article in the journal Science titled, Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? In June 1988, global warming became the more popular term than climate warming when NASA’s Dr J. Hansen told Congress that Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming".

The term climate change dates at least as far back as 1939, with an emphasis on the concept of change which can be in both directions such as increasing precipitation or decreasing precipitation, rising or declining temperature trends etc. Climate change is the long-term alteration of typical weather patterns. Concern is focussed on long-term averages of daily weather and such changes in climate can take a long time to identify and separate from the considerable day-to-day variations in the weather. Climate change maybe distinguished by a single variable such as a decreased rainfall trend over a number of decades or may usually involve several variables such as trends in rainfall amount, temperatures and windiness all occurring in the same lengthy period.

3. Carbon (C) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Are Not Synonymous but Integral Parts of the Carbon Cycle

Many people including influential social media people and parliamentarians, often appear to use the terms Carbon (C) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in a confusing way, sometimes referring to the effects of carbon when they really mean the effects of carbon dioxide, or falsely claiming CO2 is a pollutant when the pollution derives from combustion of carbon fuels like coal, natural gas and petroleum. However, we can certainly say that combustion of carbon-based fuels do emit a range of carbon-based greenhouse gas emissions including CO2 and methane (CH4).

Carbon

Carbon, designated C in chemical terms, is made up of just one type of atom. This means carbon is an element, and is unquestionably one of the most important elements on Earth. It is the principal building block for the organic compounds that make up life. Carbon’s electron structure gives it a +4 charge, leading to a great diversity in the chemical compounds that can be formed around carbon; hence the diversity and complexity of life.

Carbon occurs in many forms and places on Earth, performing and supporting vital roles in the global context.

It is the essential basis for nutrients required for vegetation growth;

It is a central constituent of limestone/chalk rock strata where it occurs as calcium carbonate derived from the remains of sea creatures accumulated and intensely bound together by pressure and heat from overlying later deposits over millions of years, creating the basis for cement and concrete.

it is dissolved in ocean water and fresh water as carbonic acid;

it is the basis of geological deposits of coal, natural gas and petroleum;

and it is present as a gas in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the second most voluminous greenhouse gas and the claimed trigger for the bulk of current global climate change.

Carbon and the combustion of carbon products produce pollution. It was these carbon products derived from combustion that caused the unhealthy pollution smog in Europe in the middle of the twentieth century. I remember vividly as a schoolboy when people walked in front of cars and busses with a torch during daylight hours to guide the vehicles. The clearing and burning of forests in Indonesia and Borneo in the late 1990s also produced thick smog across SE Asia. These smogs are replete with very small particles of carbon (or particulates). In olden times these accumulated as soot in chimneys cleaned out periodically by chimney sweeps. I was very happy as Chairperson of a UK local council Public Health Committee in the late 1960s to make the area a smoke free zone thereby banning all open fires. But the major carbon combustion product, carbon dioxide is not one of these pollutants, so please do not blame CO2 for pollution.

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a non-pollutant gas, acidic, colourless, nonvisible, and odourless. It is a compound made up of a carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms creating the molecular formula CO2. Carbon dioxide occurs naturally in Earth’s atmosphere as a trace gas via the carbon cycle involving decomposition of trees and plants and is one of the gases evaporated along with water vapour from water bodies. It is also produced by humans, for example, as they burn coal for energy and calcium carbonate for concrete. The trace gas nomenclature stems from the fact that only around 0.042% of all gas molecules in the atmosphere are CO2 i.e. 99.958% of gas molecules in the atmosphere are not CO2. We will return to this low concentration in Chapter 8. Despite its low concentration, it is a life-giving food for vegetation. The Earth would have no vegetation at all if CO2 was not available.

4. Net Carbon Emissions

Net zero emissions is the catchphrase of commentators of all shades of political opinion today. It does not mean no emissions. It means any emissions are offset by the same amount taken out of the atmosphere elsewhere. This is a bit like a set of scales by achieving balance between greenhouse gas emissions produced and greenhouse gas emissions taken out of the atmosphere by technology and increased natural sequestering. The net total of emissions is then zero. Most national climate goals are aiming for net zero by 2050; China and India are the main laggards only coming to the party in 2060 and 2070 respectively. The confusion here is that sometimes net zero refers to all greenhouse gases and sometimes used to refer only to CO2, and this needs clarifying when someone speaks about net zero emissions.

IPCC 2021 Report Key Findings: What Is the Situation Now

To start our journey the recent Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its 2021 report which can inform the rest of the text.

Global temp up 1.09°C (compared to 1850–1900 average)

Global temp over land up 1.59°C (compared to 1850–1900 average) i.e., 0.0159°C p.a.

Global temp over sea up 0.88°C (compared to 1850–1900 average) i.e., 0.0088 p.a.

Australian land areas temp up by 1.4°C (i.e., 0.014 p.a.)

Arctic sea ice area in September 2020 has decreased about 40% since 1979

No significant trend in changes to Antarctic sea ice or average temperature

Global average precipitation over land increased since 1950

Global mean sea level increase (1901–1971): 1.3 mm per year

Global mean sea level increase (1971–2006): 1.9 mm per year

Global mean sea level increase (2006–2018): 3.7 mm per year (i.e. 37 cm by 2118)

The averages above have been calculated pro rata and such predictions may be well out either way depending on emission scenario cuts made (see below)

IPCC 2021 Sixth Assessment Report Key Findings: What Could Happen in the Future

Under a very low emissions scenario (massive cuts to all greenhouse gases):

1.5°C warmer by 2021–2040

1.6°C warmer by 2041–2060

1.4°C warmer by 2081–2100

Sea level rise of 28–55 cm by 2100 and 37–86 cm by 2150

Under an intermediate emissions scenario (slight rises in greenhouse gases before massive cuts):

1.5°C warmer by 2021–2040

2.0°C warmer by 2041–2060

2.7°C warmer by 2081–2100

Sea level rise of 44–76 cm by 2100 and 66 cm–1.33 m by 2150

Under a very high emissions scenario (continued increases in greenhouse gases):

1.6°C warmer by 2021–2040

2.4°C warmer by 2041–2060

4.4°C warmer by 2081–2100

Sea level rise of 63 cm–1.1 m by 2100 and 98 cm–1.88 m by 2150

The over-riding claim of the report was that it is now ‘code red for humanity’. Prof. Mark Howden (ANU), who serves as the Vice Chair of the IPCC and was a contributing author indicated that the report was a clear and loud alarm bell, with climate change affecting every continent, region and ocean and that emissions need to be reduced significantly before 2050, or else the world is extremely likely to exceed 2°C of warming over today during the twenty-first century.

However, other scientists at The Heartland Institute a leading global think tank reviewing the report state that it seems that like other reports before it, climate disaster is always just 10 years away, but none of the predictions of climate doom have come true.

The environment policy experts at The Heartland Institute argue that IPCC bureaucracy must strike an alarmist tone in order to justify and perpetuate the bureaucracy’s existence, with the 2021 report adding virtually no extra substantive scientific evidence to the global warming debate. The objective data still show that global temperatures are rising much more slowly than the IPCC previously predicted, and that most extreme weather events and climatological factors are either not being impacted by modest warming or are becoming more benign rather than harmful. By ramping up its rhetoric and fear-mongering, the IPCC are attempting to resuscitate the climate alarmism narrative because of the lack of any new scientific evidence to offer.

The IPCC admitted the newest climate models they used in their report are flawed, running unrealistically hot. Yet, rather than delaying their report, they released it based on unbelievable inputs. How can the IPCC claim to have ‘high confidence’ that the warming of the past 50, 100, or 150 years is unusual, much less unequivocally caused by humans, when the models used to source the claim don’t track observed temperature data sets from weather balloons or satellites that far back? The answer is, they can’t. This a political, not a scientific document.

The opposing perspectives on the work of the IPCC highlights the chasm between the two sides but given the seriousness of the economic, social and political impacts of policies deriving from such Reports in a complex scientific area as climate change, it is hoped some of the issues covered in this book will help to clarify things for those getting bewildered by the ‘heat’ but not seeing any light.

The Glasgow November 2021 COP meeting was attended by a global assembly of climate warming disciples who fail to recognise the number of carbon emission miles they have flown to get there when COVID 19 has taught most of us the value of Zoom, and Skype etc. to hold productive meetings at a distance. One hopes that it isn’t just a symbolic signing ceremony, with some major world leaders (notably China and Russia) not showing up, and those who do commit to net zero 2050 will not be alive or perhaps more kindly in office to see it through. Apart from dictatorships, most countries will pass through numerous elections and changes of government as well as elected members. Maintaining the rage from either the activist or middle ground perspectives may well be difficult as economic and social changes will also impact on political decision making in the intervening 30 years to 2050. A good dose of realism will be needed to work through this melange! The irony is that Glasgow means green hollow in the pre-Gaelic language of Cumbric; we can only hope that promises are not simply token green hollow gestures.

Outline of this Book

In the following pages, I have tried to explain the major issues for those with an open mind who want to know how and why climate change occurs. I have attempted to prevent the text being a textbook by only referencing some of the major points which at the end of the book provide a reference list for those who wish to explore in more depth. The book does not cover every possible aspect as it would need to cover everything from A (astronomy) to Z (zoology) as every science is involved in climate change and its effects.

Chapters 2 and 3 lay some background on firstly the question of what is science and why science is never settled which some activists claim it is, while the second one focusses on some of the more outlandish claims and their failure to eventuate. Then follow several chapters discussing how some climate change ‘levers’ in and beyond the solar system lie totally outside human control. This leads into a series of chapters explaining issues such as the greenhouse effect, greenhouse gasses, global temperature measurement, role of oceans, the Arctic/Antarctic, renewables and modelling.

The penultimate chapter bring it all together reviewing the GlagowCOP26 conference and its relative successes and failures where debate was closely focussed on the greenhouse effect and financial support for developing countries to move to lower emissions.