Global Climate Change Is it happening? Why? What can we do?

Can it happen? We know, for a fact, that climate has changed many times in the past.

Problems with climate change How do we “prove” that anything is happening to the climate at all? The difference between trends and events. How do we know this is not the “normal state of affairs?” After all we had ice ages and sea-level changes in the past. How do we “prove” that what is happening—if anything is happening--is caused by human activity? Is this an “Act of God” or the “Hand of Man?” What is the nature of the cause and effect relationship between human activities and climate change phenomena? What is causing what? What is the price of doing something about human activities accentuating climate change? What is the “equity” position about doing something to reduce global atmospheric change? Are the people causing most of the problem likely to be the ones (a) most affected; (b) paying the most for a solution? What nature of policy is needed? Global, national, international? Is the will there to do it?

Potential impact of climate change

What causes it? Well, first of all we don’t exactly know and we certainly cannot prove any of the possibilities in the strict scientific sense. But, there are two possibilities.

Cause 2 The Hand of Man

What is the scale? SO2 is mostly a regional effect because it does not do damage until it combines with water and comes to earth as acid precipitation. CO2, on the other hand affects us directly while still in the atmosphere

The “Greenhouse Effect” You can experience this any time by sitting in your car in the sun, and closing all the windows.

The Physics of it. The energy coming into the earth from the sun is short wave energy and it passes through air and glass with no effect. However, and most people never realize this, the Earth is heated from BELOW, as the sun’s energy strikes the surface, heats it up, and it, in turn puts out long wave radiation that is trapped by glass and CARBON DIOXIDE

More Physics CO2 is, remember, only 0.03% of the atmosphere, but that maintains our earth at a steady temperature. Clearly, relatively small changes would have a huge effect. Including

Does everyone suffer? Not all the news is bad.

But climate change comes like this Extreme events

It has even intrigued Hollywood