What is climate change?
Climate change refers to a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet's weather patterns and average temperatures
Since the mid-1800s, humans have contributed to the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air by burning vast amounts of fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – to move around, heat buildings and make stuff. This, along with deforestation and some agricultural practices, has led to increased amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
When greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide build in the atmosphere, they act like a blanket around the earth. When sunlight (mostly short-wave radiation) hits this blanket, it passes straight through and continues until it reaches the surface of the planet.
The earth then absorbs this sunlight and emits a different type of light, longer-wave infrared radiation, back out to space. As it leaves the atmosphere, the infrared radiation also hits the greenhouse gas blanket. Most of it goes straight through, but some of it is absorbed and goes back down to earth. This traps the infrared radiation and causes the surface to heat – a process we call the 'greenhouse effect’.
It is crucial to understand that the greenhouse effect is critical to life on earth. Without a blanket of greenhouse gases trapping in heat, the temperature would be bitterly cold, and humans would be unable to survive. However, by adding extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humans have created an enhanced greenhouse effect.
Watch these short videos for an explanation about greenhouse gas and why even a small rise in temperature is a huge problem.
Why is this happening?
The greenhouse gas blanket is now thicker and is absorbing more infrared radiation than before. In other words, the greenhouse effect is stronger and, instead of keeping the earth at a stable temperature, it is causing the planet to heat up. The average temperature of planet earth has increased by around 1°C so far, mostly in the last 40 years and with the 20 warmest years ever recorded happening in the last 22 years.
Human activity is the main driver of climate change whether it’s from releasing greenhouse gases and aerosols into the atmosphere, high rates of consumerism, changing the use of land, increase in travel or what we eat and when. This has a range of impacts on the climate system, ecosystems, and people.
Changes to the climate system include:
Rising ocean levels – Rising temperatures are causing glaciers and ice sheets to melt, adding more water to the oceans and causing the ocean level to rise. Oceans absorb 90% of the extra heat from global warming: warmer water expands, and so our oceans are taking up more space.
Ocean acidification – Ocean acidification occurs when the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide and becomes more acidic. It is often called the 'evil twin' of climate change.
Extreme weather events – Climate change is causing many extreme weather events to become more intense and frequent, such as heatwaves, droughts, and floods.
Plastic is one of the most greenhouse gas intensive industries in the manufacturing sector – and the fastest growing. Greenhouse gas emissions from plastic are accelerating climate breakdown and threatening our ability to maintain a survivable climate.
Can it be stopped?
We need to do something, and a comprehensive report from the UN tells us what and when we need to do it. (Short answer: a lot, soon.)
Thousands of expert climate scientists from across the world have modeled how much carbon dioxide and warming our climate can cope with. They show that there is a very big difference between the warming carrying on to produce an average temperature rise of 2°C versus 1.5°C (remember we have already had about 1°C already).
To keep warming to 1.5°C, rather than the vastly more damaging 2°C or beyond, we need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by around 45% by 2030 (from 2010 levels) and to net-zero by 2050, at the latest.
When the reductions are made is as important as the scale of the reductions. If we reduce our CO2 emissions by 20% by 2030 we are heading for a 2°C rise. However, the current global commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions don’t put us on the path to keeping warming under 2°C.
FAQs
The question most frequently asked is ‘What Can I Do To Help?’ Changes we can make can be confusing and overwhelming so a good place to start is by understanding your own carbon footprint and which areas of your lifestyle you can make changes to.
Then click on ‘What You Can Do’ in the navigation tabs and take a how you can make one small change...then another!
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While we’ve all heard about “carbon footprints,” but how many of us really understand what that means and of those, how many know what their carbon footprint is?
It could be that understanding this concept is the perfect first step toward living more sustainably.
A “carbon footprint” is a number that estimates the amount of greenhouse gas produced, directly and indirectly, by a person or household’s everyday activities. Since CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas created by human activity the number is expressed in tons of carbon dioxide.
However, other gasses, like methane, are also factored into your footprint by converting them into the amount of CO2 that matches their global warming potential.
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This is done by adding together a number of factors related to your lifestyle using a carbon calculator - you’ll be asked questions about your daily activities to create a rough estimate of how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses you add to the atmosphere each year.
It might sound simple, but calculating a carbon footprint is a complex process. For example, to determine how much your typical meals contribute to your footprint, you can’t just look at the electricity or gas used to cook them; you have to think about all of the resources used to grow or raise all of the ingredients, the energy used to process and package them and the fuel used to transport them to the grocery store and your kitchen.
To simplify this process, researchers have broken the country’s overall carbon emissions into several “sectors,” such as agriculture, livestock raising, various types of manufacturing and transportation. They then measured the estimated carbon emissions each sector is responsible for. Online carbon footprint calculators use those totals to calculate your individual footprint.
But remember that your footprint is always a rough estimate.
Try a carbon calculator and see what your carbon footprint is.
Then click on ‘What You Can Do’ in the navigation tabs and take a how you can make one small change...then another! -
The WWF have produced a very easy to use calculator, which is a great place to start. Answer a few questions about your food, transport, home and purchases and you get a carbon footprint with some nice graphs and tips to help you understand and reduce it.
Continue to the WWF carbon footprint calculator
Sustainable Wells’s very own Simon Dennis has worked hard to produce an excellent resource. It is more numerical and customisable than the WWF online tool so you should end up with a more accurate total, particular if your carbon footprint is quite small.
Continue to the Sustainable Wells carbon footprint calculator
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Climate emergencies have been declared by many governments at various levels and in several nations. Locally climate emergencies have been declared in Wells, Mendip, Somerset, Bristol, Bath and nationally by the UK parliament. Broadly, these acts are to acknowledge that we face an imminent danger and need to concentrate on our efforts and responses. Often a commitment to become carbon-neutral by a specific date is made, which is good because it involves considering how all actions the governing body is responsible for effect this balance. Of course declaring a climate emergency is not enough: we need to undertake significant actions and Sustainable Wells is keen to support these however we can.
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Great job doing all those things, they are all good, but have a look at your total carbon footprint. Emissions from say driving, flying or shopping can completely dwarf other reductions. It’s important to look at the total picture and aim to act on the largest parts. It’s really hard to be carbon neutral for now but the closer you can get, and the sooner, the better!
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Yes – remember it is average temperature rise across the entire planet that is often discussed. The warming is far from even – for example the arctic region has had proportionality far larger temperature rises – and a lot of the damage from climate change is from the more frequent and severe extreme weather event
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Yes, but we don’t really know if any of the methods are going to work. Trees definitely work (you’ve probably seen them around) but when you look at the numbers it’s quite surprising how many you need to soak up a decent amount of carbon. Our best guess at present is that sequestration won’t ever balance more than a small fraction of our current emissions. We need to drastically reduce our emissions and then the small amounts left that are really hard to eliminate could probably be negated by some form of capture.
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China makes an incredible amount of stuff that we buy. If you take the emissions associated with making things and assign them to the countries in which the consumers live, China’s emissions look a lot lower and on a per capita basis emissions are much lower than ours. Plus China are world leaders in renewable energy and are making huge strides towards massive amounts of solar power generation. The problem is caused by everybody, therefore all nations need to get their house in order.
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It might make more sense to ask “won’t the economy collapse if we don’t reduce our co2 emissions?” If we keep warming the planet, sea levels will continue to rise and extreme weather will become more frequent and damaging. The economic impact of floods, fires, drought, crop loses and even destruction of entire cities are vast. Decarbonizing the economy doesn’t obviously involve economic reduction – there will still be energy, homes, transportation . . . just low carbon forms.
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There is a vast array of information available, here are some of the best . . .
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24021772
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-point-five-degrees-two-degrees/
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/climate-and-climate-change/
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions