If the Climate Change Crisis were World War II, it’s 1939
but everyone is acting as if it’s the Roaring Twenties
A standard trope of the climate change denier is that “they”, some unnamed shadowy cabal, stopped referring to “global warming”, and instead rebranded it as “climate change”. While there is some evidence to suggest that this rebadging was attempted by elements of the fossil fuel lobby, the fact is that global warming is not the same thing as climate change; global warming is a driver of climate change.
Climate Change 101
It’s been understood for over a hundred years now that Earth’s atmosphere traps heat by what’s known as “The Greenhouse Effect”. While the physics are not exactly the same as in an actual greenhouse —Earth is not shrouded in a layer of glass after all— the analogy is sound. Certain atmospheric gases, primarily carbon dioxide, but also methane, various nitrogen molecules, and others, trap heat. If you add more greenhouse gases, you trap more heat.
By burning fossil fuels, we release energy that took many millions of years to store, and with that energy we release a lot of greenhouse gases. For every tonne of carbon we burn we release approximately three and a half tonnes of CO₂. Why? By burning the carbon we cause it to combine with oxygen. CO₂ is…
