Little agreement on dealing with a changing world

Our world is warming – of that, there is no doubt.

In July 2010 researchers at our Met Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US updated their analysis of ten of the planet’s climatic “vital signs”.

All reflect a clear warming trend, whether air or sea temperatures, ice cover at the North Pole or snow over the continents.

As the mercury has continued to rise unchecked, Channel 4 News has reported from all four corners of the warming world. Asking not only how the planet is changing, but also whether the scientists and policymakers have got their facts right.

We have also been trying to see through the “greenwash” to ask just how far the world will have to go to tackle climate change – if indeed, that is what it really wants to do.

As if fundamental shifts in today’s climate were not interesting enough, recent events have made the global warming phenomenon more gripping than ever.

After a frenzy of green rhetoric, progress towards tackling climate change now seems to be losing momentum.

Tackling climate change
After a frenzy of green rhetoric, progress towards tackling climate change now seems to be losing momentum.

After massive build-up to the “last ditch” climate talks in Copenhagen little more than a wish-list of international action emerged.

The backdrop of global financial torpor has done little to inspire politicians, businesses leaders and individuals to ramp up environmental action begun the late 2000s.

Achievements like Europe’s carbon trading system, schemes to pay poor forested countries for the good they do the planet, and targets laid down in the UK’s climate change bill are more of a challenge.

Then came the backlash. First allegations emerged of wrong-doing relating to emails leaked from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia.

Then, errors were found in the main climate science report to world leaders produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The most recent polls in the US, UK and Australia suggest people are less convinced than they used to be that climate change is man-made or more convinced that the threat is being exaggerated.

Though the mistakes were genuine, the situation was not helped by activist “climate sceptics” who doubt either the science of climate change, or that its threat is exaggerated.

The result was seven separate reviews of climate change science, scientists or institutions within as many months.

While climate science appears to have emerged from the episode largely unscathed, the image of climate scientists and the research they do has taken a battering.

The most recent polls in the US, UK and Australia suggest people are less convinced than they used to be that climate change is man-made or more convinced that the threat is being exaggerated.

So while the threat – if you are part of the majority who still believes there is one – grows, action to deal with it has slowed.

Greenhouse gas emissions
The UK’s climate change bill commits to an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but it is far from clear how this Government or future ones will aim to meet the target.

It requires a massive increase in energy efficiency: retrofitting homes and businesses and building more efficient new ones.

Power generation must be overhauled – coal fired power stations that don’t capture their emissions must go, there will be more wind turbines at sea and nuclear power might have to come back to plug the gap.

Cars must go electric and less rubbish can go to landfill. All these measures will save money in the long run, but will be very expensive to fix in the short-term. And right now, of course, the cupboards are bare.

Power generation must be overhauled – coal fired power stations that don’t capture their emissions must go, there will be more wind turbines at sea and nuclear power might have to come back to plug the gap.

Internationally, the situation is possibly worse. Europe has similar aims to the UK but certain member states, particularly those with weaker, more fossil-fuel dependent economies are trying to slow things down.

The US, so recently the great green hope after President Obama took over, has made little progress at all.

It can not embark on even the modest cut in carbon emissions it signed up to in Copenhagen because the necessary legislation needed to make it work has ground to a halt in the senate.

While China has overtaken many other countries to implement a programme of energy efficiency and emissions cuts its leadership has been clear that its economic growth comes first.

India, following close behind China has little interest in tackling climate change.

Extreme weather
Yet across the world, there are changes afoot.

There is evidence extreme weather events like the Pakistan floods or Kenyan drought are increasing in frequency. Oceans are becoming more acidic and ice over the Arctic is thinning.

The problem scientists are facing right now is how certain they can be these changes are caused by man’s influence on our planet – and if they are, whether or not they will be harmful.

What is more, the planet may warm by between two and 3.5 degrees centigrade simply as a result of the greenhouse gases we have already emitted. Sso part of our future will be living in a warmer world, even if nothing more is done now.

There is evidence extreme weather events like the Pakistan floods or Kenyan drought are increasing in frequency. Oceans are becoming more acidic and ice over the Arctic is thinning.

And that is what makes the issue of our changing climate so compelling.

Dealing with the issue is likely to mean significant economic and social changes. Some believe people will be able to change their ways, or at least muddle through in a warmer world if they do not.

Others are convinced the pressure being exerted on the planet will soon be too so great unforeseen ecological catastrophes will befall us, and mankind will head the way of the dinosaurs.

News stories do not get much more important than that.