Having been a climate scientist for nearly 30 years, global warming and climate change is something I work with professionally and in a scientific sense. As such, it’s not something that I have feelings about. I look at the evidence then make logical and informed decisions based on that.
Real world observations tell us that the climate is changing and the average global temperature is increasing. Given the vast number of examples of a warming world it would be very foolish to try and pretend otherwise.
What all this visible evidence doesn’t tell us is why the climate is changing, this is where the science comes in. You may be surprised to learn that the cause of global warming isn’t something that’s recently been discovered, it’s actually been around for 200 years (first hypothesised in 1811 by Simeon Denis Poisson and documented 13 years later by Joseph Fourier).
I’m sure you don’t want a lecture on quantum mechanics so I won’t go into detail but essentially we know why global warming is happening and the role that humans are having in affecting the climates (if you do want the QM then please ask).
Understandably there are some people who don’t like the idea that human activities are affecting the climates and so they claim it’s not happening. Unfortunately they’re not very good at pretending and of several hundred excuses put forward so far, none of them have withstood even the most basic scrutiny.
There’s also a vast amount of misinformation that has been put out. Your first respondent is a good example of this when he states “scientists have proven that every planet is heating up”. This appears to be a genuine mistake, the truth is that seven of the 189 bodies in the solar system are heating up, many more are cooling down. In each of the seven cases of warming, the reasons are unique to that body.
Unless a person actually knows about these things then it’s easy to fall into the trap of accepting something without requiring proof. This happens all too often with climate science and as a result there are a great many people who think they have the answers when in fact they’re completely wrong.
There are of course many things we don’t yet know about our climates and there are inherent uncertainties in many of the things we do know. Whether humans are affecting the climate isn’t one of them, this has been established, demonstrated and proven many times over and is presumably the reason why there isn’t a single scientific organisation on the planet, both of national and international standing, that disputes this.
So, my feelings on global warming – it’s real, it’s happening and it will continue long into the future unless we take extreme action with immediate effect, and I can’t see that this is going to happen.
I think it’s something we need to address with some degree of urgency, not because it’s likely to affect me personally but because of the extreme effects it’s already having in Asia and Africa (where I do a lot of my work).
My favoured approach would be to intensify research into nuclear fusion, this is the clean and safe form of nuclear power, it has none of the radioactivity or other problems associated with nuclear fission (the type we use now). Essentially we’ve already cracked fusion, we just need a way of containing the immense amount of energy and temperatures that are involved.
Perhaps because I’m a scientist I tend to favour a scientific and technological approach to solving the issue of climate change, I’ve never been in favour of taxation or other financial impediments.
The method of choice that I would like to see implemented is the chemical sequestration of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This would buy us plenty of time in which to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without anyone having to change their lifestyles.
As an added bonus the reaction involved creates a lot of heat energy which could be used to heat schools, hospitals and other public buildings (or it could be sold to private consumers). By adding an additional reaction to the current proposal, the byproduct would be synthetic fuel which could be used in place of regular gasoline.