Climate Change Debating Notes
...in case you meet a flat earther!
Caveat: Climate Change is natural. For 400,000 years there has been a glacial cycle every hundred thousand years. “Human induced Climate Change” is the issue.
Climate Change Science at December 2005
1. Current levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are 30% higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.
“We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years.”
Source: Science” Journal November 2005
2. The years 2001 to 2005 make up five of the six hottest years since 1861 (the other year being 1988). This decade is set to replace the 1990’s as the warmest decade ever recorded.
Source: UK Meteorological Office, September 2005
3. The Arctic Circle is 20% smaller than in 1979. Global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.
Source: ACIA (2004)
4. The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes has dropped since the 1990s.
Source: Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) 2005
5. In the last 150 years, sea levels have been rising twice as fast as in previous centuries. The present rate of rise is 2mm per year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that sea levels rose by 1-2mm per year over the last century, and will rise by up to 88cm during the course of this century.
Source: Science” Journal November 2005 (study covers last 100 million years)
Part B - Resources
Page 26
6. In 2004 there were 800 scientific papers published pro the amplified greenhouse effect being real and no scientific papers denying the amplified greenhouse effect is real. Yet in the same year 53% of media was pro the amplified greenhouse effect being real and 47% of media denied the amplified greenhouse effect is real.
Source: Graeme Pearman, Senior Research Fellow, Monash University, 2005
Climate Change Forecasts
7. Global carbon dioxide emissions could double by 2050 if energy-saving measures are not universally introduced,
Source: Energy and Climate Change, released by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development at the World Energy Congress.
8. The globally averaged surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8ºC over the period 1990 to 2100.
Source: IPCC WGI Third Assessment Report 2001
9. Climate change could drive a million of the worldʼs species to extinction as soon as 2050, a scientific study says.
Source: Science journal Nature 2005.
“Climate change now represents at least as great a threat to the number of species surviving on Earth as habitat-destruction and modification,”
Chris Thomas, conservation biologist at the University of Leeds
10. The Great Barrier Reefʼs coral could disappear in as little as 20 years as sea temperatures rise faster than expected, a world expert on coral and climate change has warned. In 1998, 16 per cent of the worldʼs coral died after rising sea temperatures caused mass bleaching on almost every reef.
“We may see a complete devastation of coral communities on the reef and a major change to the pristine values, which at the moment are our pride and joy. We are likely to see corals rapidly disappear from great parts of the Barrier Reef, as it has already from large parts of the Caribbean.”
Source: Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,
director of the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland,
Climate Change according to World Leaders
11. There is no longer any doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities.
President Bill Clinton
International Greenhouse Summit - MONTREAL Dec. 2005
12. California is the sixth biggest economy on the planet and we are committing to an 80% reduction in our carbon emissions, based on our 1990 levels by 2050.
Arnold Swarzenegger
Governor of California, 2005
Part B - Resources
Page 27
13. Victorians needed to adjust to a grim future of climate change caused by global greenhouse gas emissions. I don’t think we are prepared. People need to realise that climate change could have a major impact on their lives. We are going to have to cope with more droughts and more bushfires because of climate change, but it will have a major impact on a whole range of other areas.
Environment Minister John Thwaites
14. “In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism”
Sir David King, UK Chief Scientist, 2004
15. Climate change “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern.”
Peter Schwartz,
CIA consultant and former head of planning
at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, October 2003
16. “Human induced climate change is one of the major challenges confronting the world this century”
John Howard, 2004
17. “Climate change, with its potential to impact every corner of the world, is an issue that must be addressed by the world”
George W. Bush, 2001
18. Global warming is “long term, the single most important issue that we face as a global community”
Tony Blair, 2004