Environment Monday - So you don't believe in climate change and global warming because it's snowing

One of the most depressing things for me on Twitter is that people will argue, until they are blue in the face, that black is white, just because they saw a tweet or a dodgy youtube video where someone made a compelling case. Global warming and climate change are perhaps the best examples of this. What I don't quite understand is why so many people with this view end up presenting a show on GB News, but that's another matter. 

A rather strange modern tendency is to apply the rules of religious belief to scientifically proveable fact. Something like belief in God is an intangible thing. It is a belief in something that cannot ever be proven or disproven. Things like global warming are proveable. There is a simple experiment, that can be done in any basic school science lab, that empircally demonstrates how this works (CLICK HERE TO READ HOW IT WORKS). This shows how CO2 in the atmosphere acts as an insulator and raises temperatures.

As for the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, this again can be measured and the insulation effect calculated as it rises. Given the nature of the earths weather systems and all manner of other variables, this is a very imprecise art, the general trend can be plotted and the models refined.

In truth, we've only had accurate weather forecasting since the advents of satellites and supercomputers. It is all a relatively new art. We have temperature measurements in countries such as the UK going back a few hundered years, but not for islands in the Pacific etc. One could reasonably make a case that we lack the data to definitively predict the effect, as we didn't have supercomputers, satellites etc  even 75 years ago, but given the potentially castastrophic effects, is that really wise. There is enough data available to demonstrate that things are changing, CO2 levels are rising, climate is changing in many countries and the world is getting hotter. 

In the UK, the weather is dictated by the direction the wind blows in. If it is coming from the south west, the weather is generally wet and cold in summer and warm in winter. If it is from the North East, the opposite is true. It is hard to see patterns here. If you live in Sub Saharan Africa, then the change is very noticeable. When it comes down to it, lets consider an anolgy. If you are driving your car down country lanes, do you drive slowly, because you have no idea what is around the corner, or do you put your foot down, because you will get to the pub early and there may be nothing around the corner? To my mind, the sensible thing to do is to be cautious and be sensible. Proceed carefully. 

We have enough evidence to indicate caution is wise.