but the rest hangs around as a greenhouse gas. Cutting back on energy usage and planting more trees would help. We know this because levels of CO2 have been stable for thousands of years until the Industrial Revolution began 150 years ago and deforestation also became rife.
ISN’T CLIMATE CHANGE JUST PART OF A NATURAL CYCLE?
It is true that every 100,000 years or so the Earth is subject to climate changes due to its orbit around the Sun. This is known as Milankovitch Cycle and its effects as well as its timeline are all fairly predictable.
In the 1970s, for example, scientists were already warning of a coming Ice Age as a result of this Cycle, so nothing’s changed there – except the timing. We should be able to predict about 50,000 years of natural warming as a result of the Milankovitch Cycle, that is; the problem, however, is that current warming is off the scale by a factor of – well, a lot! – if only the Milankovitch Cycle was the cause.
Climate change and global warming is speeding the process up.
WE CAN’T PREDICT THE WEATHER EVEN A FEW DAYS AHEAD SO HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT THE CLIMATE OF THE FUTURE HOLDS?
Firstly, weather isn’t climate. Weather refers to individual instances of sun or rain in specific geographical areas; climate is the average of all these instances over a bigger area and a longer period of time. Weather changes rapidly (which is why it can be so hard to predict) but climate is relatively stable.
An analogy, if you’re a gambling man, is the form of a particular horse. Of course you can’t predict (i.e. know) if he’ll win the race you’ve just bet the house on, but if you look back over his form, his