What Is Climate Change?

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by

James Walters
in
What Is Climate Change?

Here we look at; What Is Climate Change?; Mass Extinctions; and Human Driven Climate Change. This is part of our series on helping climate change by Growing, Eating, and Living in a Way That Could Be Sustained Forever.

Welcome to part 1 of our mini series on climate change.

In this mini series, we’ll cover everything from what is climate change, the causes, the effects, and how you can help to stop climate change.

If you already know that it’s important to do something about climate change, here are the things that you can do:

  1. Check out #VoteWithOurMoney with 6 Steps to Help Stop Climate Change
  2. Try the Sustainability Roadmap with 40+ Solutions to Climate Change
  3. Use the Company Directory to Help You Grow, Eat, and Live Sustainably

If you want some more facts before making any decisions, let’s get into the details:

So, for part 1, let’s cover what is climate change?

What Is Climate Change?

Climate change is the heating up and cooling down of earth’s atmosphere. These changes in temperature affect the weather. Planet earth has experienced desert conditions, lush vegetation, and ice ages.

Climate change is important to us because we need the right climate to live in. We need a climate with the right amount of oxygen in the air and fresh water to drink and food to eat.

Mass Extinctions Because of Climate Change

In earth’s history there have been 5 mass extinctions.

The last mass extinction was around 65 million years ago, and it wiped out 75% of all species. 75% of all species wiped out because of a change in climate that made it impossible for those species to live.

The last mass extinction was the result of an increase of greenhouse gases that caused the planet to heat up: Trapping heat from the sun, in earth’s atmosphere.

Fast forward to the last 11,700 years, a time called the Holocene, and we have a period in the history of planet earth with some of the most stable temperatures. We have the goldilocks planet: not too hot, not too cold, just right.

Human Driven Climate Change

Then humans got involved: agriculture and ploughing, around 10,000 years ago, deforestation; the rapid rise of conventional agriculture with artificial fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides; the extraction and burning of fossil fuels; and not forgetting the growth of consumerism, consumption, and waste—waste like plastics that pollute and take 1,000s of years to degrade.

Because of that human intervention, because of the emergence of the mechanical mind—extracting and exploiting planet earth’s natural resources, manipulating everything, growth at all costs, wealth at all costs, without any thought to regeneration—we’re now in a time unofficially called the Anthropocene, where human activity has had a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.

With science, and many years of global monitoring, we know the magic number of just enough or too much greenhouse gas in our atmosphere:

““If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from [current levels] to at most 350 ppm.” — Dr. James Hansen.”

— SOURCE: Why 350?

So we know that 350 ppm is the magic number. The issue is, we’re already well past that figure. We’re currently at 415 ppm CO2 in our atmosphere (at the time of creating this piece on 19th October 2021).

Yes, planet earth, without humans, has experienced mass extinctions because of greenhouse gases and climate change, however, in previous mass extinctions it took volcanoes 1,000,000 years to release enough greenhouse gases to heat up the planet beyond livable conditions. Humans have released the same amount of greenhouse gases in only 200 years!

The last IPCC report has now confirmed that global warming is ‘unequivocally’ human driven. Thanks to the IPCC report, there’s no more room for lies and misinformation about climate change. We have to act. We have to act quickly.

The first step in the climate emergency is to halve global emissions by 2030!

That’s it for part 1 of our mini series on climate change. In part 2 we’ll look at the causes of climate change.

The most important event in the history of climate change is happening in November 2021, the UN Climate Change Conference Glasgow. What I, you, everyone of us do has an impact on climate change and the decisions that governments make. We don’t need to wait for governments to tell us what to do. We can all make changes to the way we live and how we spend our money, showing that we prioritise people and planet, and those changes will encourage or force businesses and governments to change too.

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Here Is What You Can Do

Want to Continue Your Journey?

Where Next?

There is so much inspiring information to give you ideas of how to help climate change by growing, eating, and living sustainably, you can:

  1. Read Our Articles
  2. Sign-Up to Our Free Email Newsletter
  3. Get Started and Vote with Your Money
  4. Try the Sustainability Roadmap
  5. Use the Company Directory
  6. Support Nafford Junction

Help Us Inspire Others

If you are passionate about helping climate change, please consider supporting Nafford Junction, you can:

  1. Become a Patron to Give Regular Contributions
  2. Buy Me a Coffee to Make a One-Off Contribution
  3. Create for Us and Publish Thought Provoking Content
  4. Become an Inspiring Leader and Advertise with Us
  5. Go to NaffordJunction.co.uk/support

Sources Used to Create This

  1. How To Sustain Life On Our Planet
  2. Welcome To David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
  3. Anthropocene
  4. One Strange Rock: There’s No Place Like Home
  5. Global warming ‘unequivocally’ human driven: IPCC
  6. Emergence of the Mechanical Mind and Its Dire Implications
  7. Episode 2: Climate Denial: 50 Years of Lies & Misinformation
  8. Following the science to take climate action and make sure COP26 keeps the 1.5 degree goal alive
  9. Why 350?
  10. This Is How Much Carbon Dioxide Is in Earth’s Atmosphere

Production Notes

This was produced by me, James Walters, as a personal project to help stop climate change by inspiring others to grow, eat, and live sustainably.

Any advice given is the opinion of those involved and does not constitute medical, financial, or legal advice.

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