Spreading the word

Look out for the exciting displays that tell you more about climate change in libraries, at the Potteries Museum and at colleges and universities – and pick up a leaflet to show your family, friends and colleagues.

Bring up climate change in your community. Look at what your local community group does and ask if it could work together to help tackle climate change. What is your local council, your employer and the government doing to help out?

Throughout 2011 events will be running around the world to highlight climate change and how it could affect people’s lives and to help people understand what is being done to tackle it. For details of these please click on ‘news and events’.

On the website you will also find the Message Board. This is your opportunity to ask questions, make comments and to keep in touch with everyone else who is concerned about climate change.

Just click the link on the right /top to add your comments and join the growing community of people who want to tackle climate change.

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What is climate change?

We use the term ‘climate change’ to talk about the effect people have had on the earth’s climate over the last 100 years and what we predict will happen between now and 100 years into the future.

From past climate records, scientists know that the earth has been warming during the 20th

century and the 1990s were the warmest decade since records began in 1861. Scientists also think the increase in temperatures during the 20th century was highly likely to have been greater than for any other century for the last 1000 years.

What causes climate change?

The main cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. This includes oil, coal and gas. Generating electricity is one of the main causes of global warming. 72% of electricity in Britain is produced by burning coal or gas. Think about where we use electricity at home: televisions, tumble driers, lights… What about in business? Supermarkets need electricity to keep all their freezers cool, offices usually need to run computers all day long.

When you burn oil, coal and gas, they create carbon dioxide as a by product. Carbon Dioxide is an insulating gas. It traps the heat of the sun. Humans are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. The extra carbon dioxide is making the earth get warmer.

Transport is also a major cause of climate change. Using petrol and diesel also creates carbon dioxide as a waste product. When you drive cars and fly planes, you create carbon dioxide which increases climate change.

Isn’t it just part of the natural cycle?

The planet’s climate is affected by a variety of different things including the sun, the sea, the land and the atmosphere, and it is known that in the past the earth’s climate has been both warmer and colder than it is today.

Scientists have developed models to show why this happened, using only natural events such as volcanic eruptions and increased activity of the sun. But when natural events of the present day are put into these models, they cannot explain why the earth is warming up, unless the effects of man’s activities are added in.

When this is done, the increase in CO2 caused by man explains the increase in temperatures we are seeing now. This is hardly surprising, because we know CO2 in the atmosphere keeps the earth warm and we also know more of it is released when we burn fossil fuels.

It is also important to remember that after it is produced, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for about 100 years. This means that any we release now will continue to affect the earth’s climate 100 years into the future.

Why is it such a problem?

Scientists predict that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere through man activities, the earth’s temperature will rise between 1.4C and 5.8C by the year 2100. People have never had to deal with such temperature increases before.

We know this because we can trace the past amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by using ice cores and other sources. This has shown that levels have never been higher during the past 420,000 years, long before we humans walked the Earth.

How will it affect me?

Just think of the things we rely on in our everyday life – our food, water supply, transport system and homes have all been developed or designed for today’s climate.

Scientists predict that in Britain annual rainfall will stay the same, but less will fall in summer and more in winter, leading to droughts and flooding. They also predict that extreme weather will increase, with high winds, very heavy rain and very hot days affecting people’s homes and health and disrupting road and rail systems.

Some crops such as Wheat can be severely affected by very hot weather and wildlife may also suffer. Already, some trees such as Beech and Ash are suffering from droughts and other woodland plants such as the Bluebell, which we treasure as being so British, may also suffer as trees come into leaf sooner, shading them out.

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