A Critical Review and Response to the Climate Change Denier Letter “There Is No Climate Emergency”

Authors

  • Charles Tochukwu Ugwuonah Arrupe Jesuit University, 16 Link Road, P.O. Box MP 320, Harare, Zimbabwe

Keywords:

Science, Climate Change, Denials, United Nations, Emergency, Response

Abstract

The deliberations bordering around the disaster of climate change today has become a matter of growing importance to many environmentalists around the world as well as environmentally concerned organizations like the United Nations. The combination of anthropogenic activities on the environment which began over half a century ago has only served to exacerbate the effects of heat waves, natural disasters, ocean acidification processes, etc, being witnessed around the world today. This has necessitated more scientific investigations to be conducted over time into the causes and solutions to the climate change problem. Nonetheless, just as with every deliberative process which, more often than not, constitutes contrasting views, climate change deniers continue to refute this reality of climate change in our world today. One of the most outstanding denier arguments was recently written by a group of scientists, professors and political leaders, under the sponsorship of the European Climate Declaration, in a letter titled “There is no climate emergency”. In this letter, these deniers penned down six points in refutation of climate change and its emergency. Therefore, in continuation of the ongoing climate change deliberations, this research attempts to review and respond to these points raised by these professors against the reality and emergency of climate change. In doing so, this research arrives at the conclusion that climate change is indeed a reality of the present age and more importantly, an emergency.

References

. European Climate Declaration. “THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.” Sep. 26, 2019.

. K. Hasselmann. “Multi-pattern fingerprint method for detection and attribution of climate change.” Climate Dynamics vol. 13, pp. 601–611 (Sep. 1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/s003820050185.

. A. Ribes. & Terray, L. “Application of regularised optimal fingerprinting to attribution. Part II: application to global near-surface temperature.” Climate Dynamics 41, 2837–2853 (2013).

. Jones G. Scott. & Christidis, N. “Attribution of observed historical near-surface temperature variations to anthropogenic and natural causes using CMIP5 simulations.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres vol. 118, 4001–4024 (2013).

. IPCC. “Climate Change 1990: The IPCC Scientific Assessment”. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 212.

. IPCC. “Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 584.

. IPCC. “Climate Change 2001: The S

. cientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 881.

. IPCC. “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. U.K, New York, NY, USA, pp. 996 http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_ fourth_assessment_report_wg1_report_the_physical_science_basis.htm.

. IPCC. “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, pp. 1535. http://www.climatechange2013.org/report/.

. Henry Gastineau. “The Industrial Revolution kick-started global warming much earlier than we realized.” The Conversation, Aug. 24, 2016.

. USGCRP. “2017 Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment.” U.S. Global Change Research Program, vol. 1, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp., doi: 10.7930/J0J964J6.

. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “2019 was 2nd-hottest year on record for Earth say NOAA, NASA.” Jan. 15, 2020. URL: https://www.noaa.gov/news/2019-was-2nd-hottest-year-on-record-for-earth-say-noaa-nasa.

. Zeke Hausfather. “State of the climate: 2020 on course to be warmest year on record.” Carbon Brief. Oct. 23, 2020.

. Zeke Hausfather, et al. “Evaluating the Performance of Past Climate Model Projections.” Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 47, issue 1, Dec. 4, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085378.

. Warren Cornwall. “Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming.” ScienceMag. Dec. 4, 2019.

. James Hansen et al. “Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications.” SCIENCE, June 3, 2005, pp 1431-1435. DOI: 10.1126/science.1110252.

. Brooks Hays. “NOAA: Arctic warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.” United Press International, December 12, 2018. URL: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2018/12/12/NOAA-Arctic-warming-at-twice-the-rate-of-the-rest-of-the-planet/5141544580754/.

. Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie. “The tropical Pacific as a key pacemaker of the variable rates of global warming.” Nature Geoscience, vol 9, pp. 669–673, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2770.

. Thomas Crowther, et al. “Mapping tree density at a global scale.” Nature 525, pp 201–205 September 2, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14967.

. Noelle E. Selin. “Carbon séquestration.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. January 16, 2019. URL: https://www.britannica.com/technology/carbon-sequestration. Access Date: February 28, 2020.

. Jennifer Scroggins. “Climate Change is Making Natural Disasters Worse, and More Likely. How Do We Protect the Most Vulnerable?” Public Health Institute, November 15, 2017.

. Sebastian Acevedo and Natalija Novta. “Climate Change Will Bring More Frequent Natural Disasters & Weigh on Economic Growth” IMFblog, November 16, 2017.

Downloads

Published

2021-03-07

How to Cite

Ugwuonah, C. T. . (2021). A Critical Review and Response to the Climate Change Denier Letter “There Is No Climate Emergency”. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR), 56(2), 92–105. Retrieved from https://gssrr.org/index.php/JournalOfBasicAndApplied/article/view/12228

Issue

Section

Articles