Are we responsible for global warming?
‘When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.’ John Muir, Scottish naturalist and writer, 1838-1914
Climate change is undoubtedly a reality. Global average temperatures rose by around 0.7 ˚C over the 20th century and 1998 was the warmest year since records began in 1861, with 2005 almost as warm.
Evidence of global warming has been found in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, and in changes to nature’s calendar already seen in Scotland. Spring plants are blooming earlier in Scotland (on average three weeks earlier since 1978) and migrating birds are arriving earlier.
All of the evidence points to the primary cause of this warming being an increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, as a result of human activities since the industrial revolution. Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have risen by more than 30% since the industrial revolution and are now rising faster than ever before. Greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change.
Most of the developed countries around the world have agreed to address climate change, signing and ratifying The Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol's major feature is mandatory targets on greenhouse gas emissions for the world's leading economies. Every year the countries of the developed world emit millions of tonnes of global warming pollution. We burn fossil fuels to heat our homes, power our industries, fly airplanes, drive cars and generate electricity.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), representing the consensus view of thousands of scientists across the world, observed in its Third Assessment Report that ‘There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities’.
Although there is an unprecedented consensus among world scientists that global warming is caused by human activity, not all scientists and commentators agree. Media reports often highlight climate change myths and TV documentaries and books have questioned the influence of humans on the climate.