Scientists around the world appear to be stepping back a little from the rhetoric around climate change and how humans may be impacting the gradual warming – a move I think is sensible if more people are to get their heads around this complicated issue.

The current thinking seems to be that yes, the world is warming and that yes we’re seeing more extremes – but less political discussion around mankind being to blame.  

Most sane, reasonable people will agree that the amount of pollution humans are putting into the planet around the globe – especially from industrial nations like China, India and the US – has to be doing something negative to our planet – with consequences.

Put bluntly – there is no evidence that says 100% this increase in temperature is due to mankind’s pollution, but there is little doubt that we are contributing to it in some way.  The debate is – will us making changes really make a difference?

There are nutters on both sides of the argument.  Not to say that if you disagree with me you’re a nut job, but rather, if you can’t  calmly debate your factual view points, and be open minded, then I’ll most likely put you in that category.  So often these days people don’t debate, they instead yell the most extreme things to be noticed.

Many skeptics truly believe the scientific community is drumming up scaremongering statements to win more funding.  I’m yet to meet a respected scientist who would agree with that statement or even fit in to that description. But to be fair to the skeptics there has been a rash of unfortunate tampering of data – or selective use of data – which has led to court cases.  Every time the science community gets it wrong like that it sets their cause back significantly.

The climate change argument became too political before the recession – now its on the back burner as the economy trumps expensive clean and green energy ideas when everyone is broke. 

But clearly something is happening to the world.  I simply don’t understand why so many skeptics dig their heels in and refuse to accept what is clearly happening – more droughts, more floods, more snow storms, more extremes.  Just look at New Zealand over the past few years…the insurance industry worldwide has also confirmed there have been far more claims related to extreme weather – and it can’t be put down to more people living in more vulnerable areas.  Even insurance companies are saying climate change may already be costing them significant money.

And its not about the big events.  We have always had those.  it’s about the frequency of extremes.  It’s about the severity of those extremes.

The US just had its warmest month ever – not just the warmest July, the warmest month of any month over the past 120 years.  Sure, records are always broken, but what we’ve seen over the past 10 years are flood, snow, drought and heat records being broken far more often.

The North Pole now completely melts in summer – that never happened when I was a kid.  Greenland is melting incredibly quickly too. 

And to the skeptics – ok, what if it is normal and part of a cycle – does that mean we should just dust our hands and say “oh well, nothing we can do?”.  

As for New Zealand the climate change debate is a tricky one – as we aren’t one of the bad polluters and scientists I’ve spoken to say New Zealand may be one of better places on earth to cope with it.   For that reason it makes it hard for New Zealanders to perhaps invest as much energy into this.  If we lived in a nation that was predicted to go underwater, become a desert, or see more hurricanes, then we might worry a bit more. 

I believe we are already a fairly green society – we aren’t major polluters.  But can we improve?  Absolutely.  Do we need to do anything drastic?  Not in my view – so long as we continue to acknowledge cleaner and greener energy is better and continue to work towards being a cleaner society..  Will a tax fix things?  Are you kidding me?  No.  Charging a tax for climate change will line someone’s pocket and force the rest of us to pay more while other nations continue to pollute.  This is why we need to be reasonable from both sides.

Every country needs to do their part – every individual does – but we need to stop with the extreme political arguments and start listening to what the trusted and widely respected scientific community have to say.  If we – as a people – are going to go down the road of dismissing what scientists have to say then I feel we, as human beings, are going backwards.

– Homepage image / Zelda Wynn

– Philip Duncan