Of course, when we live lives that are dependent on burning fossil fuels (the major source of increasing CO2) efforts to point out that this might cause problems have tended to go unheeded and, if they've been attended to at all, been dismissed as scare stories. Stories put about by people who just want to make us feel guilty or undermine our way of life.
As the meteorological evidence has piled up it's become clear that dealing with Climate Change is less about atmospheric physics than about how to bring about social, economic and political change in a world where the prevailing social norms are ones that encourage us to consume more stuff and use more and more energy; not only will the purchase of the next do-dah make us feel better, it will also be a visible demonstration of our social status.
The extreme weather events of the last decade have made it very hard to dismiss warnings as just scare stories and acceptance of the reality of the change, if not of what needs to be done, is increasingly becoming the new social norm.
Before the full impact of austerity was felt by local government many local authorities in the UK appointed a Sustainable Development officer. In Scarborough we had three (Tony, Daniel and James). They were all full of ideas but eventually left the job because they became frustrated with the lack of support from above. Their bosses, like most people who succeed in building establishment careers, were good at fitting in with prevailing social norms and the norm which prevailed at the time was, even if Climate Change was proven, that the impacts weren't immediate and priorities lay elsewhere.
A couple of weeks ago, a meeting of the Borough Council declared that we were in a state of Climate Emergency. I don't think they would have done this a decade ago and am hoping that this is just one piece of evidence that prevailing social norms are shifting. It's likely that someone will be appointed to a similar role to that previously held by Tony, Daniel and James, but it can no longer be considered enough just to appoint someone without backing this up with support from the highest levels in the Authority. The existing CEO has recently announced his intention to retire in June. In the search for his successor we need to make sure that she or he feels able to give this declaration the full support it deserves.
Whatever we decide to do, we have to acknowledge that we are social animals, are acutely aware of how we're thought of by other people, and to get off the consumption treadmill will need to find other ways to demonstrate our status. Now there's a challenge for the 21st century.
The social norm represented here will have to change
*Incoming radiation from the Sun warms the Earth's surface and drives our weather systems. The Earth, like all warm bodies, also emits radiation (though mainly in the infra-red part of the spectrum). The surface reaches a steady temperature when the outgoing infra red radiation from the warm Earth precisely balances the incoming radiation from the Sun. Change this balance and the Earth's temperature will change.
Carbon Dioxide has long been known to be a strong absorber, and then emitter, of infra red radiation. CO2 molecules in the atmosphere will absorb some of the radiation being emitted by the warm Earth and then re-emit it. But, crucially, they won't emit it in any particular direction and a proportion will be sent back where it came and rewarm the Earth's surface.
The simple end result is that putting more CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to make the Earth warmer.
The other simple scientific fact is that if you put more energy into the atmosphere then the weather is likely to get livelier.
That's it. Nothing about the scale of the changes, nothing about deciding whether warming is primarily the result of this effect or if there are other long term changes taking place, just that if you put more CO2 in the atmosphere the Earth will be warmer than it would have been and the weather will be livelier.
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