Climate Change

When you start to explore the issue, climate change is extremely scary. Indeed, if it isn’t scary, then you really haven’t understood it. It is an area where one can easily resort to apocalyptic scare tactics... ...Sharon Astyk recently wrote: "One of the disturbing things about listening to scientists studying climate change is the fear in the voices and words of people not accustomed to be fearful, and the sense that generally speaking, scientists are far more worried than most of us are." -- Rob Hopkins

The decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the last century and the warming in this century is warmer than anything in the last 1,000 years in the Northern Hemisphere. -- Robert Watson, IPCC

We have at most ten years, not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions. -- James Hansen, Director, NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Globally we consume (mostly by burning) 84 million barrels of oil/day. That is the equivelant of an Olympic-sized swimming pool full every 12 seconds (or 5 every minute). Converting oil from liquid to particulates in such quantities is generally agreed to be a major contributing factor in the increasingly understood issue of Climate Change.

We need to be realistic about where we are, and ambitious about what we can do. Climate change is a massive problem, but the worst effects could still be avoided if we are collectively able to engage with the issue. Transition Initiatives are but one of many powerful carbon reduction technologies which, if embraced in time (and it is of course a big "if"), can mean that we avoid the worst extremes of climate change. The trends at the moment, I grant you, really are not looking good. -- Rob Hopkins