Climate Change - An opinion by Grant Sabin
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I assume that for most of us today the term ‘Climate Change’ refers to anthropogenic forced climate changes and not the overly complex and varied natural changes that have taken place over millions of years. What do we mean by climate?
The World Meteorological Organization uses as a benchmark to compare the climate of different places and different times as the average measurements of temperature, pressure, rainfall, etc., for a period of 30 years. Each 30-year period can be different. As you know, we have dry, wet, cold and hot periods.
When studying meteorology in the early 60’s I learnt about the greenhouse impact of carbon dioxide. In those days we were told a large proportion of the human input of CO2 into the atmosphere was being absorbed by the oceans. A process that decreases the PH of the oceans. Hence the oceans have become more acidic and somewhat saturated. As a result of human activities, the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere has increased by over 30% in the last 60 years.
Along with thousands of scientists I’m convinced we humans are causing very dangerous changes to the planet’s climate. It’s not just CO2, there’s methane, CFCs and the ozone layer (hopefully not so bad now). The atmosphere does not behave in a linear manner; hence I’m convinced we can expect more extreme weather events and major global climatic changes.